Authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are household names to anyone who likes to read, and regularly produce works that sit atop bestseller lists around the world. But how do these and other successful chroniclers of the human condition engage in philanthropy?
Once, authors typically plowed portions of their royalties and profits into causes that closely mirrored their books’ content or themes. Garrison Keillor assigned half of the royalties for “Lake Wobegon Days” to Minnesota Public Radio, for example, and profits from the late Rock Hudson’s biography by Sara Davidson went toward fighting the AIDS epidemic that led to his death in 1985. The results were sometimes significant. Proceeds from the Hudson biography resulted in a foundational quarter-million-dollar gift to the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR), an organization has gone on to invest more than $617 million toward its cause.
Today, a few trends are apparent around the giving of living writers. There’s an unsurprising tendency toward supporting and protecting libraries, books and literacy, and a distinct focus on helping the vulnerable. The past decade has seen authors establish greater structure to their giving through foundations. Spouses and family are often engaged in strategies and programming. And giving is largely done quietly.
Here’s how the philanthropy of five living writers — Isabel Allende, Stephen King, James Patterson, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling — has developed. Arranged alphabetically, they represent a snapshot across gender and genre of how success in writing can help right the world.
Isabel Allende: “We only have what we give”
The work of the prolific writer Isabel Allende is recognized around the world. Widely considered the first internationally successful female Latin American author, she’s received both Chile’s National Literature Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her books have sold more than 51 million copies and are available in 30 languages.
Allende set up her foundation in 1996 to honor the wishes and short life of her daughter, Paula Frias, who spent most of her adulthood volunteering in low-income communities in Spain and Venezuela. It was originally seed-funded with proceeds from “Paula,” a book she wrote in tribute to her daughter in 1996.
Lori Barra, the foundation’s executive director and Allende’s daughter-in-law, explained that the foundation started when the author was uncomfortable with keeping the proceeds from the book and found herself in a dark place following Paula’s death, a time she has described as “walking alone in a long and dark tunnel.”
When someone suggested that a new perspective might help her make a fresh start, Allende travelled to India with her husband and friend. During a guided tour of a rural part of the country, they stopped at a tree surrounded by several women. As a way of reaching past language and cultural barriers, she gifted them with the bangles she’d purchased the day before at a bazaar.
When Allende moved to leave, a woman tried to reciprocate by passing along a bundle of dark rags. On closer inspection, she realized they held a newborn baby. The guide hurriedly took it from her arms and left it under the tree, loudly scolding the women.
Back in the car, Allende’s husband asked the driver why the woman would give her baby away. “It was a girl,” he said. “Who wants a girl?”
The events “cleared away the cobwebs of self-pity” and gave Allende new purpose. “I know what I’ll do with my savings,” she said. “I’ll start a foundation to help women and children.” Today, the Isabel Allende Foundation’s mission remains investing “in the power of women and girls to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence.”
Barra reports that the foundation currently holds roughly $11 million in assets, and expects to make roughly $2 million in grants this year, with the mindset “to give now if the need is here.”
The foundation began its work by funding scholarships for underprivileged women and children. Barra described its current work as “heart-based.” While it doesn’t accept unsolicited grant requests, Barra said the foundation “finds things because we’re listening.” By keeping an ear to the ground with grantees, for example, the foundation knew all along that reproductive rights were being chipped away.
A current emphasis on reproductive rights resulted in funding for groups like the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Brigid Alliance, which bridges the barriers to safe abortion care in the U.S., like travel costs. Meanwhile, examples of partners on its immigration work are the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, which provides legal support to immigrants facing detention and deportation, and Kids in Need Defense (KIND), which received a $50,000 grant to provide pro bono attorneys for immigrant and refugee children.
At age 81, Allende continues to write every day, sustaining her philanthropy with annual funding from her other books — and through the mantra “we only have what we give.”
James Patterson: “I’m here to save lives”
James Patterson is known for blockbuster series like “Alex Cross” and “Women’s Murder Club” — a number of which have crossed to other mediums. His books have sold more than 425 million copies worldwide, and make him one of the highest-earning American authors.
The perennially bestselling author is also widely recognized for supporting reading, literacy and education, going back years. While libraries and books have become a flashpoint recently, Patterson’s vocal advocacy for both was evident more than a decade ago, in 2013, when he penned “Who Will Save Our Books, Bookstores, Libraries?,” an ad that ran in Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Times Book Review. “The federal government has stepped in to save banks and the automotive industry,” he wrote. “But where are they on the important subject of books?”
To James Patterson, getting at-risk kids to read as they progress through school and life is all part of a pattern that he sees as life-altering. Big picture, what “I’m trying to do,” he said, “I’m here to save lives.”
Patterson has donated millions of books valued at $7.25 million, and has invested in literacy programs and scholarships across the country. That includes more than a million books to students, directly and through youth programs and under-resourced school libraries.
Patterson has also earned a reputation as the “patron saint” of indie bookstores across America. Since 2014, he’s donated more than $2 million to support the industry through a holiday bonus program that delivers $500 checks to indie booksellers.
In the spring of 2020, he contributed a half-million dollars through #SaveIndieBookstores, a pandemic-related partnership with the American Booksellers Association and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation that ultimately raised $1.2 million. At the same time, thousands of teachers received $500 grants from Patterson to help students build reading skills as schools closed. Administered by Scholastic Book Clubs, the program brought Patterson’s support for teachers to $11 million, according to the Associated Press.
Much of Patterson’s work’s been a family affair. In 2011, after realizing that their own son, Jack, wasn’t showing a passion for reading, James Patterson and his wife, the author Sue Solie Patterson, created the award-winning, web-based initiative ReadKiddoRead.com to inspire future lifelong readers.
The bulk of the couple’s giving has been directed to higher education and college scholarships. The Patterson Family Foundation has invested more than $26 million in James Patterson’s alma maters Vanderbilt University and Manhattan College, and Sue Patterson’s alma mater, the University of Wisconsin.
Gifts to Vanderbilt include scholarships for undergrads and fellowships to support visiting scholars, as well as literacy and teaching programs, like one at Peabody College.
In 2018, the family added to the scholarship funds they’d created earlier at the University of Wisconsin by launching Patterson Family Scholarship Legacy Match, a $3 million matching fund to boost planned giving for student aid. Eighty households of Badger alumni and friends enabled the school to fully realize their pledge.
In 2020, UW-Madison received $5 million from the Pattersons to support its School of Education’s Wisconsin Teacher’s Pledge Program, an effort to stem the state’s teacher shortage. In exchange for the equivalent of in-state tuition and fees, program participants pledge to teach three to four years at the pre-K to 12th-grade level in Wisconsin schools.
The family has also supported other scholarships totaling more than $7 million, spread across 24 institutions. They include support for the colleges of education at Appalachian State University, Florida Atlantic University, Howard University, Mississippi State University, the University of Alabama, the University of Florida and the University of Southern California. The College of Arts and Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Division of Education, Supervision and Direction at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, also received support.
Patterson credits other family members for his philanthropic mindset. “I was raised to give back,” he said when asked about a gift to Howard. “So my mother and grandmother should get the credit here.”
Stephen King: “We don’t forget how cold it is in Maine in the winter”
Philanthropy is also a family affair for the King of Horror, Stephen King, and his wife, Tabitha Jane King. On the road to reviving the genre of horror fiction, Stephen King has sold more than 350 million books worldwide just in his own name, many of which have been turned into wildly popular films like “The Shining” and “Carrie.”
The Kings’ philanthropy largely stays in Maine, in appreciation of what the state has meant to their lives. They were both born in the state, met in college at the University of Maine, raised their family there, and reside there today.
In addition to inspiring their giving, Maine has inspired some of the fictional towns featured in the Kings’ writing. Tabitha King is the author of eight books, including a series set in the fictional community of Nodd’s Ridge, Maine. Stephen King has said that the fictional town of Derry featured in “IT” and other writing is a portrayal of Bangor.
In a 2005 commencement address at the University of Maine, which awarded him a BA in 1970, King talked about how he and Tabitha have tried to give back to their state and community, and urged graduates to give away a dime of every dollar to help people who only want “a little something for themselves and their children.”
“Go out broke,” he advised, “You’re not an owner — you’re just a steward.”
He also said that the greatest place on earth to start giving back is “the place where you are right now.” Of the 10 pieces of advice he went on to dispense, numbers seven through 10 all echoed the way he directs his philanthropy: “stay in Maine, stay in Maine, stay in Maine, stay in Maine.”
The couple created The Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation, or the STK Foundation, in 1986 to support under-resourced, community-based initiatives in Maine, with a focus on reaching the people and organizations that fall outside the “usual” channels of support.
The family foundation is interested in the causes and consequences of social and environmental problems, particularly along the lines of literacy, community services and the arts. It accepts online applications for grants of up to $50,000 twice a year – in mid-April and mid-October.
The STK Foundation’s most recent tax filing, for 2021, details grants totaling roughly $4 million on total net assets of $24 million. The largest grants reported in Maine that year were a half-million to the Bangor YMCA and $250,000 to the University of New England in Portland — a campus of Maine’s largest private university.
Looking down the list, grants of $50,000 went the Welcome to Housing Home Goods Bank in Old Town, which supplies household items from “mattresses to can openers” to people transitioning to their own living spaces. Gifts of the same size went to the University of Maine at Presque Isle, the Penobscot Theater in Bangor, and the Royal River Conservation Trust in Yarmouth, which helps protect the waterways and conserved lands around Casco Bay. Kennebec Valley Family Dentistry in Augusta and the Northern Light CA Dean Hospital, a 25-bed and critical access hospital near Moosehead Lake in Greenville, received similar amounts.
Overall, the STK Foundation’s giving seems to be less about big numbers and more about building community support. The foundation often encourages others to join it in meeting goals.
In 2011, the foundation donated $70,000 to help Maine residents cover their heating bills in the face of cuts to the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It pledged to match an equal amount of money raised through the community. “We don’t forget how cold it is in Maine in the winter,” King said at the time.
The foundation also recently committed $25,000 toward an effort to improve Dakin Pool for the kids of the Bangor community — part of a $160,000 community fundraising effort.
The man who encouraged writers to “stop watching television and read as much as possible” is also behind concerted support for libraries across the state of Maine. Last year alone, Maine State Libraries thanked the STK Foundation for gifts to libraries in Lebanon, Deer Isle, Greenville, Kezar Falls, Bingham, Pembroke, Prospect Harbor, Caribou and Greenbush. Gifts supported everything from automation to roofing repair.
Nora Roberts: “You don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book”
Nora Roberts began writing in 1979, when a blizzard trapped her at home with two small boys and little else to do. She went on to produce more than 225 romance novels under different pen names that have collectively sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.
A founding member of the Romance Writers of America, she was the first author inducted into its Hall of Fame.
Roberts is regularly ranked as one of the top charitable celebrities in the world, giving primarily through the Nora Roberts Foundation, which focuses on literacy and education causes, along with ways to help create a “beautiful, equitable and safe world” through work in the arts, social justice and the environment.
She established the foundation in 2001 on the advice of her financial advisor as a way of keeping track of all the philanthropic gifts she was recommending, and seeing her activity grow. Since then, the foundation has awarded an estimated $55 million in grants.
Initially, Roberts’ giving had a local bent, favoring the places where she and her children lived, like Maryland, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia. Perhaps her single largest gift was $2.5 million to a Boonsboro High School public-private partnership, which helped create a state-of-the-art auditorium and classroom space. Boonsboro, a town in Washington County, Maryland, has only 3,000 residents.
Roberts’ geographic outlook has since broadened. During the fiscal year 2020-2021, which newly syncs with the calendar year, the foundation donated $8.3 million, $2 million of which went to literacy efforts. Of that, the lion’s share went to literacy service programs, like the adult literacy leader ProLiteracy, along with literary councils and groups that provide free books.
The foundation also backs libraries and library support organizations. “I have always believed,” Roberts has said, “that libraries are essential to our society and the preservation of our democracy.” It made roughly $350,000 in grants last year to 23 library groups and institutions across the country, ranging from $1,000 to $200,000. The foundation also sees the value of making a big impact in small places by supporting individual libraries.
Grant applications are considered quarterly. Note that the foundation considers the brief statement of purpose, and the ways nonprofits stand to uniquely benefit from its goals, to be the most important part of its application. Guidelines can be found here.
At a time when intellectual freedoms are being challenged and efforts to ban books are rampant, Roberts is also actively working to support writers and readers. A gift to the EveryLibrary Institute, for example, launched a Fight for the First initiative to help people organize to protect the tenets of the First Amendment.
Roberts has first-hand knowledge of the threat. The Authors Guild recently condemned the removal of her novels from high school libraries in Martin County, Florida, based on one person’s belief that the romance genre should not be allowed in schools. Roberts’ response: “You don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”
She also backs librarians. In 2022, Roberts donated $50,000 to save the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan. It was at risk of closing after the town voted to take away 85% of its budget when librarians refused to remove LGBTQ books.
Roberts made the gift through a GoFundMe with a $250,000 goal. “Libraries and librarians should be valued and celebrated, never attacked and demeaned,” she said in the comments. “[fifty thousand] is the limit GoFundMe allows for donations. If you’re short of your goal, please contact me. I’ll make up the rest.”
J.K. Rowling: “Isn’t it time we left orphanages to fairy tales?”
Bloomsbury’s initial print run of J.K. Rowling’s 1997 debut fantasy novel was a shortsighted 500 hardcovers. Today, more than 600 million “Harry Potter” books have been sold around the world, making her creation the best-selling book series of all time. They, and other subsequent “Wizarding World” franchise offshoots and bestsellers, have also helped make Rowling one of the wealthiest authors of all time, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion all in.
Rowling has become controversial in recent years for her persistent record of anti-trans commentary and narrow concept of gender definitions. But her philanthropic goals remain clear. Readers will have their own views regarding Rowling’s positions on gender and how they stack up next to her philanthropic work, the latter of which is detailed below.
The author has largely used the wealth and influence gained from the story of an orphaned 11-year old boy to help keep children out of institutions and support vulnerable women and children through two giving vehicles, the Volant Charitable Trust and the children’s charity Lumos, named for a spell in her stories that brings light into the dark. She has called giving wisely and intelligently “a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need.”
Rowling founded the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000 to support marginalized women, children and youth in Scotland. She has also served as its president since that time. Grants support women made vulnerable by rape, incarceration, ethnicity and motherhood. Volant also supports children and young people at risk from physical, mental or substance abuse, and programs that address wellness and nutrition for families facing poverty.
A statement of financial activities for 2022 showed a £1 million contribution to Gingerbread, an organization that serves single parents, a situation Rowling lived through early on, after the end of her first marriage. Other activity that year focused on combating COVID-19, including a half-million-pound gift to Kalsa Aid Interntaional, and a £25,000 gift to Place2Be, a mental health charity working in UK schools. In all, the trust reported roughly £9.5 million in charitable activity that year.
The vehicle Rowling is best known for, Lumos, all started with a black-and-white photo she came across in June 2004 — an image of a small boy confined to a caged bed in a residential institution. Rowling decided that she couldn’t look away from his isolation from the world, and came to see his plight as “a metaphor for the attitude that enabled the unjustifiable incarceration” of millions of children around the globe.
Soon after, Rowling joined Baroness Emma Nicholson in cofounding the Children’s High Level Group, an organization dedicated to ending the systematic institutionalization of children worldwide. It went on to become Lumos in 2010, and today fights for every child’s right to a family, “because children belong in families, not orphanages.”
Of the 5.4 million children around the world living in institutions, 80% have a living parent. Lumos engages government, youth and nonprofit partners in addressing the root causes that land kids in institutions — from family separation to poverty and discrimination. It advocates for an alternative model that provides community-based services to end child separation.
Its model of transforming care systems and re-integrating children from institutions to families depends on building partnerships at many levels. The main partners are the child, the child’s family and residential institutions’ key staff, and local services in the community where the transition takes place.
Geographically, Lumos began working in Moldova in 2007, and has since expanded to countries including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Haiti, Greece, the U.S., Brussels and Ethiopia. Work in Ukraine, a country with a high rate of institutionalization, began in 2013, but initially stopped when war broke out. In 2016, Lumos was invited back by Ukrainian central authorities to help develop a national strategy on childcare reform. From there, it created a “demonstration program” in the Zhytomyr region, adding global government organizations and NGOs to its partnership model.
In 2020, Lumos reported £2.7 million in income through grant giving, £1.5 million in royalties, £1 million in individual giving, and £128,000 in other income. The great majority of that — nearly £5 million — was spent on deinstitutionalization activities. Global training followed at just over £1 million. Lumos USA, which was launched in 2015, reported revenues of $1.7 million in 2021, against net assets of $2.1 million.
In just a dozen years, Lumos reports training more than 30,000 social workers in delivering community-based services that help children remain or return to family settings. It also supported the nutritional needs of roughly 3,000 kids and helped redirect more than $300 million in donor funding from institutions to community-based services.
By 2050, Lumos’ goal is to leverage at least $15 billion in support to deinstitutionalize children through partners like the World Bank and the European Union. Long-term, the goal is a world in which no child lives in an institutional setting. As Rowling has put it, “Isn’t it time we left orphanages to fairy tales?’“
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