Taylor Swift
/SOURCE OF WEALTH: Singer/Songwriter
FUNDING AREAS: Disaster Relief, Health, Education, Arts & Culture, Hunger, Literacy
OVERVIEW: Taylor Swift may not have a formal foundation, but she has been quietly engaging in philanthropy for years. Her interests cover a variety of causes, but she has made the largest impact responding to natural disasters and giving “transformative” donations to foodbanks in places where she has performed. Additionally, she has made several gifts directly to fans to help cover medical or education expenses, and she has donated the proceeds from several songs to designated charities. Grantmaking is proactive and doesn’t accept unsolicited applications at this time. Swift is only in her 30s, so perhaps she might create a formal funding vehicle down the line.
BACKGROUND: Taylor Swift is one of the most successful recording artists of all time and has won more Grammy Album of the Year awards, more American Music Awards, more Billboard Music Awards, and more MTV Video of the Year Awards than any other artist. She is also the world's highest-grossing female touring performer ever, and her Eras Tour is the first to generate more than $1 billion in revenue.
Born in 1989, Swift is from West Reading, Pennsylvania and grew up on a Christmas tree farm. Her father worked for Merrill Lynch as a stockbroker and her mother was a marketing executive. Her family moved to Nashville when she was 14, and she released her first album at 17. Her subsequent albums and singles include some of the best-selling and most streamed in history. She is a vocal advocate for recording artists, taking on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music over unpaid royalties and rerecording her back catalogue to protest unfair ownership of her master recordings. Swift has also acted in television and film.
ISSUES:
HUMANITARIAN & DISASTER RELIEF: Some of Swift’s earliest philanthropy has gone to disaster relief organizations. She donated $100,000 to the Red Cross to support Iowa flood victims in 2009, $500,000 to flood relief organizations in Nashville (where she was living) after the floods there in 2010, and $1 million after catastrophic flooding in Louisiana in 2016. She helped raise over $750,000 for tornado relief in 2011, and she donated $1 million to organizations responding to devastating tornados in Tennessee in 2020 and 2023. In 2024, she gave $100,000 to the family of one of the victims of the Kansas City Chief’s Super Bowl Parade shooting and attended Ramy Youssef’s fundraiser to help raise money towards humanitarian relief in Gaza.
HEALTH: Taylor Swift has supported a variety of health causes dating back to the beginning of her career. She donated $25,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee, $100,000 to the V Foundation for Cancer Research in North Carolina, and $50,000 to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She gave to the World Health Organization for relief and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. She has also supported the UNICEF Tap Project.
Swift also donated all proceeds from her song “Ronan” (written about a three-year-old who died from neuroblastoma) to cancer charities.
HUNGER: Swift made substantial donations to foodbanks across the country at every stop of her Eras tour, including to Arizona Food Bank Network, Food Lifeline in Seattle, and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. She also gave to the Houston Food Bank after Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas in 2017.
ARTS & CULTURE: Swift has a long history of supporting arts and culture organizations across the country, although much of her arts giving goes to her hometown of Nashville. She has given to Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Nashville Symphony. She’s also given $75,000 to Hendersonville High School’s auditorium restoration project. She has also supported Musicares.
EDUCATION: She donated the proceeds from her “Welcome to New York” single—over $50,000—to New York City public schools. Swift relocated to the city in 2014.
LITERACY: The singer is a big advocate for children’s literacy and has given tens of thousands of books to schools and libraries across the country, including 14,000 books to the Nashville Public Library, 6,000 books to the library in Reading, PA, and 25,000 books to New York City schools as part of a partnership with Scholastic Books’ “Open a World of Possible” initiative.
WOMEN & GIRLS: Swift donated to the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2017 following her successful countersuit against a former Denver DJ who allegedly groped her in 2013, and she has repeatedly supported the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.
RACIAL JUSTICE: She has donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and supported the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
LGBTQ: Taylor Swift advocates for LGBTQ causes and has given to GLAAD and the Tennessee Equality Project.
WILDLIFE: Swift gave proceeds from her wildlife themed “Wildest Dreams” video to the African Parks Foundation of America. She has also supported Beth’s Furry Friends, a pet rescue foundation.
LOOKING FORWARD: Swift has yet to establish a charitable foundation. However, as her giving appears to be ramping up, perhaps she will sooner rather than later. Additionally, she has become more vocal about her politics and has been at the center of several political conspiracies of late; all of which may inspire her toward playing a more active role in promoting civic engagement among her “Swifties” and supporting issues that are more politically partisan. But for now, in the absence of a formal organization, expect Swift to continue supporting causes and issues that happen to catch her eye.
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