Charities and sector leaders have paid tribute to the singer, actress, businesswoman and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who died this week aged 80.
Parton set up the US not-for-profit The Dollywood Foundation in 1988, initially to offer scholarships and funding to young people living in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was born. It was the foundation for Parton’s Imagination Library book gifting programme, which launched in 1995.
Over the subsequent three decades the programme has given more than 332 million books to children across the United States, Canada, Australia, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. More than seven million children in the UK have received free books through the programme, according to the Imagination Library website.
Emma De Closset, chief executive of UK Community Foundations, subscribed to the programme when she became a parent, and described Parton’s work as “conviction philanthropy at its finest”.
In a statement posted on social media, the reading charity BookTrust said: “Dolly was a remarkable champion for children’s reading, dedicated to helping more children access books and experience the joy of stories.
“She understood the life-changing power of reading and worked tirelessly to ensure more young people had the opportunity to benefit from it. [Her] dedication and unwavering belief in the power of books have left a legacy that will be felt for generations to come.”
The National Literacy Trust described Parton as “a passionate, committed advocate for children’s reading” whose work would “leave a lasting legacy”.
The charity’s chief executive, Jonathan Douglas, who joined the advisory board for the UK Imagination Library after its launch in 2007, paid tribute to Parton, saying she “used the platform of her celebrity to become a passionate and articulate advocate for a child’s right to literacy and the joy of reading”.
He said: “In 2007, when Dolly’s Imagination Library was established in the UK, I supported and worked with her team and was rewarded with an invitation to brunch with Dolly at the Savoy. A date I’ll never forget!
“Later that day she rocked up at the Department for Education to shout for literacy with the then-Secretary of State, Ed Balls, who I know was quite as giddy as I was to meet her.”
The former chief executive of the NSPCC, Sir Peter Wanless, was a civil servant under Gordon Brown’s Labour government at the time. As he recalled in a Substack blog published earlier this week, he found himself “in the surreal position of having to brief [Balls] for a meeting with Dolly Parton, knowing he would likely be susceptible to her world-class charm and powers of persuasion”.
He wrote: “Ed is an intelligent man, and he was an engaged and energetic Secretary of State. But keeping a Secretary of State to an agreed briefing line when confronted with Dolly Parton was not straightforward.
“My carefully constructed policy argument was competing with the extraordinary human force of the person sitting in front of us.”
Wanless said: “Dolly was brilliant. She wasn’t there as a celebrity ornament. She had grown up in poverty. She understood what books could mean to a child. She understood the power of aspiration and imagination. And she had turned her own success into a mechanism for putting books into the hands of children who might otherwise have very little access to them.”
He described the meeting as the most memorable day of his Civil Service career, adding: “Dolly had another quality which is difficult to capture in a briefing note. She made people feel good about doing good.”
Beyond the Imagination Library and her initiatives to support children living in her home county to achieve educational success, Parton’s extensive philanthropic legacy includes helping to fund the development of the Covid-19 Moderna vaccine and donating millions of dollars to medical research, disaster relief and wildlife conservation, opening a sanctuary for American Bald Eagles.
“I suspect that future historians of philanthropy will look back on her as a major figure among 20th- and 21st-century donors,” philanthropy expert Rhodri Davies said. “One whose approach often provided a counterpoint to concerns about the wider negative aspects of big money giving.”