When IRS filings revealed in 2021 that James Walton and his cousins Ben and Sam Walton had each put more than $200 million into their foundations, it seemed like the operations might soon mature into philanthropic giants.
Perhaps they would follow in the footsteps of their cousin Lukas Walton, who at the time had just unveiled his $1.2 billion foundation and investment vehicle, Builders Vision, and has continued to expand the operation in the years since.
But two years later, that growth spurt hasn’t quite materialized for the trio from America’s richest family.
Grantmaking for all three foundations has either frozen or fallen during that span, and two out of the three heirs did not make any significant contributions to their foundations, according to newly released 990-PF forms for the operations.
There are reasons to think more money could be on the way. James and Sam have shown an admirable willingness to spend well beyond the 5% minimum payout mandate for foundations (a threshold other living donors treat as a ceiling), which suggests either a very early spend-down or expectation of future top-ups. Not to mention that many donors make only intermittent donations to their foundations.
The trio are scions, after all, of a clan whose collective wealth is nearing a half-trillion dollars, much of it in the hands of their fathers. Rob Walton, whose three children include Ben and Sam, and his younger brother John Walton, father of four including James, each control $100-billion-plus fortunes — and the former is 80, the latter 76.
From the flagship Walton Family Foundation to Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum, the family’s philanthropy already gets a lot of headlines, even if its scale remains modest compared to the clan’s total wealth.
In that respect, Sam and James — whose wealth is not publicly known — are actually leading their centibillionaire fathers, at least in terms of the philanthropy we can easily track via foundation tax records. Sam has nearly $70 million more in his foundation than his father’s Rob Walton Foundation. Meanwhile, James has a foundation while his father, based on public records searches, does not.
The family’s spending has often sparked concerns about their philanthropic influence. One recent example was a February 2024 investigation by Civil Eats and Nonprofit Quarterly that named the three heirs’ foundations among a group of Walton philanthropies that it argued had created “echo chambers in environmental journalism, and beyond.”
Based on a review of their latest publicly available 990 forms, here’s what I found out about these three heirs’ foundations and the groups they favor.
A slow steady climb for Sam Walton’s foundation
Sam Walton is the only one of these third-generation heirs to keep pumping serious money into his philanthropy over the last two years. The 56-year-old put $108 million of Walmart stock into his Catena Foundation in 2022, the third consecutive year he had donated that much or more to the philanthropy, bringing its endowment to a high of $574 million.
Catena’s grantmaking fell to $30 million in 2023, down $5 million from the year before, but the operation still paid out several million dollars more than required. Since 2021, the foundation’s payout rate has averaged 6.9%.
As in past years, Catena’s three biggest awards went to the Environmental Defense Fund ($1.6 million), Western Resource Advocates ($1.4 million) and State Leadership Project ($1.2 million). The operation also cut $1 million checks to Voices Project USA and Defending Democracy Together Institute. Those are the highlights, but the organization made more than 100 other grants.
Based in Carbondale, Colorado, Catena is a southwest-focused operation, but with national reach. Almost half of its awards in 2023 went to organizations in Arizona and Colorado, but about two-dozen states got at least one check.
Unlike his cousin Lukas — whose grantmaking and social investments we’ve been tracking closely — and brother Ben, Sam Walton’s foundation still has no website, but you will find the Catena name online, featured as a sponsor on media outlets like KJZZ and journalism sites like Poynter.
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The biggest beneficiary of Ben and Lucy Ana Walton’s philanthropy: McKinsey
As in many past years, the Zoma Foundation’s biggest grant of 2023 went to Fundación Viento Sur, or the South Wind Foundation, the Chilean operation of its founders Ben and Lucy Ana Walton — i.e., the money went from one arm of their philanthropy to another.
But that $2.7 million award was exceeded by a $3.15 million payment the Denver, Colorado-based foundation made to McKinsey International for services described in a single word in their IRS filing: “consulting.”
Zoma is deeply intertwined with McKinsey. At least two staffers joined the foundation from the consulting giant’s Denver office, a third worked there earlier in their career and the former CEO of the couple’s family office, Zoma Lab, started her career as a McKinsey consultant.
Largely thanks to that McKinsey payment, Zoma’s already-high 2022 expenses more than doubled to hit $7.0 million in 2023, against just $10.3 million in grantmaking. In other words, they spent about 68 cents on expenses for every dollar they granted in 2023.
Grantees were largely unchanged in 2023. Other than their Chilean operation, top awardees included the High Line Canal Conservancy ($1.5 million) and three prior recipients: Windward Fund for its “Grantees Hub” program ($647,139), Arapahoe Community College Foundation ($574,594) and Rocky Mountain Adventist Healthcare Foundation ($561,265).
The 2023 990 also shows the couple continue to prefer to make program-related investments, or PRIs, from their foundation’s $526 million endowment instead of grants.
Zoma’s traditional grant portfolio has often totaled far less than 5% of assets, but PRIs — every dollar of which count toward a philanthropy’s mandated spending — make up the shortfall. For instance, Zoma made $5.8 million in PRIs in 2023 that, when combined with $14.2 million in grants and expenses, added up to qualifying distributions of $20 million and change, just a couple thousand dollars more than the amount its IRS form calculations found it needed to distribute that year.
Related: Here’s What We Know About a Walton Heir’s Zoma Foundation, a Big Supporter of Early Childhood
James Walton’s grantmaking falls, but payout rate remains high
More so than Ben and Sam, 37-year-old James M. Walton once seemed to be in a hurry to make his Wend Collective into a mega funder.
Grantmaking grew nearly five-fold in 2019, and then tripled the following year to reach a high of $73 million. But the operation’s awards shrank to about half that sum in the following years — and it cut the portfolio even further in 2023, when the operation sent out less than $30 million.
Despite the slowdown, the foundation continues to grant well more than required, with an average payout rate exceeding 20% over the past three years.
Wend’s biggest awards in 2023 went, for the most part, to lower-profile regional and state-based organizations. The operation made just a handful of seven-figure grants, including Indigenous language preservation group Menomini yoU ($2 million), Equal Justice Initiative ($1 million), and Black Farmer Safe House Fund ($1 million via RSF Social Finance).
The foundation’s top grantee was a youth development organization which James Walton founded nearly a decade ago, Great Work Inc., which received $3.6 million, as well as $185,247 in consulting fees.
Major six-figure awards went to Trust for Learning ($700,000 via New Venture Fund), Project 41 12 ($700,000) and Policy Working Group ($600,000 via Amalgamated Foundation). Several groups also received $500,000 grants: the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, Native Forward Scholars Fund, Potlikker Capital, Shelterwood Collective, The Biomimicry Institute and Wildflower Foundation.
When I visited Wend’s LinkedIn page in January, which a few years ago was its lone public face, I was surprised to see the past tense: Wend “was an experimental philanthropic vehicle,” it reads. I recently checked the operation’s website and found an enigmatic reassurance: “We are wending, be back soon.” Then again, that message has been unchanged since the site launched in early 2023.
