Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation is the current philanthropic organization for Oprah Winfrey. It makes grants to support organizations in the areas of K-12 education, food insecurity, access to healthcare, and housing.
IP TAKE: While this funder is not especially transparent, Winfrey’s celebrity and public profile guarantee that her philanthropy makes headlines. The foundation’s two funding areas are not well-defined, and one gets the impression that the organization makes grants more according to Winfrey’s impulses than adherence to program guidelines. New grantseekers will likely find it difficult to receive funding here. This is not an accessible or transparent funder. A hard funding nut to crack.
PROFILE: The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation is one of the primary philanthropic vehicles of iconic talk show host and media personality, Oprah Winfrey. It seeks “to lead, to educate, to uplift, to inspire and to empower women and children throughout the world, opening doors so that each person can begin to define what it would mean to lead their best life and fulfill their own possibility for greatness.” The foundation makes grants to support “organizations that serve children, families, and communities, with a specific focus on youth education.”
The Charitable Foundation replaces Winfrey’s earlier charity, Oprah’s Angel Network, established in 1998 and which raised more than $80 million for charitable causes before it was shuttered in 2010. Some of that money went to disaster relief efforts for hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the network helped build 60 schools in 13 countries. Much of the work once conducted through the Angel Network is now being handled by the Charitable Foundation.
Grants for K-12 Education
The foundation’s Education program prioritizes support for organizations with education as part of their core mission. Winfrey’s program description on the foundation’s website states that “[education] is the key to lifting vulnerable and underserved communities out of poverty, and empowering people to reach their fullest potential.” All its grantmaking goes toward realizing that goal.
The program has to date helped to educate 72,000 people. Organizations that have received funding through this program include Center for Urban Families, Living Classrooms, Boys and Girls Clubs of East Mississippi, Live Healthy Chicago, and South LA Forward. It has also given at least $10 million to A Better Chance, whose mission is to improve access to quality education for students of color, and has given $1 million or more to at least nine different charter school organizations in a number of different areas throughout the country. The foundation also pledged $1 million to Teach For America to address the social and emotional learning needs of students and teachers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Mentoring programs have also received support.
In addition to support for education projects and organizations, the Charitable Foundation runs the Oprah Winfrey Leaders Scholarship (OWLS) program, which “supports academically gifted students who demonstrate leadership in their communities.” In addition to tuition assistance, the scholarship program provides mentorship and “offers unique access to speakers and thought leaders in various fields.”
Winfrey’s Charitable Foundation also gives millions annually to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, which exclusively supports the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a boarding school for girls located in South Africa.
Grants for Community Development
The Charitable Foundation’s other big grantmaking area is its Community Outreach program, which supports “grassroots organizations in their efforts to lift the most vulnerable in their communities.” In particular, the program prioritizes work support for food insecurity and healthcare and housing.
Both the Food Insecurity and Care & Recovery initiatives center around support for families who struggled both during and in the aftermath of the pandemic due to hunger, inadequate healthcare, and shelter. In 2020, the foundation pledged $12 million to support organizations helping underserved communities in what she considers her “home cities”: Nashville, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Kosciusko, Mississippi. As part of this, Winfrey made a $1 million grant to America’s Food Fund, and partnered with Tennessee State University and Mount Zion Baptist Church to create Nashville Nurtures, to feed 5,000 local families impacted by COVID-19.
Important Grant Details:
The Winfrey Charitable Foundation has given over $400 million to nonprofits around the world. Grants range from just a few thousand up to several million. The most common amount is $100,000.
Aside from the OWLS program which invites scholarship applications annually only when the submission window opens, the foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding.
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