Celebrity fortunes tend to be measured in mansions, private jets, supercars and eye-watering business deals. But some of the world’s wealthiest entertainers and sports stars have used a sizeable chunk of their money – and, just as importantly, their ability to persuade others to part with theirs – to tackle problems ranging from disease and illiteracy to access to healthcare and clean water.
The amounts are not always directly comparable. Some celebrities have donated substantial sums of their own money, while others have established organisations that have raised billions from governments, businesses and the public.
But what unites them is sustained involvement and, in many cases, an impact stretching far beyond the size of their own fortunes.
Dolly Parton: The gift of reading
Dolly Parton built an estimated $450 million (R7.3 billion) fortune, but one of her most enduring legacies began with something her father never had: the ability to read and write.
Inspired by him, Parton launched the Imagination Library in her Tennessee home county in 1995, sending free books to preschool children regardless of their families’ income.
It has since expanded across the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Ireland and passed 300 million books distributed in 2025. Parton’s philanthropy extended to disaster relief, hospitals and medical research, but literacy remained her defining cause.
The country star, who died last week aged 80, turned a childhood shaped partly by her father’s illiteracy into hundreds of millions of books placed directly into children’s hands.
Between them, these eight celebrities illustrate very different ways of giving. Some wrote enormous cheques. Some built institutions. Others lent their names and influence to causes capable of attracting vastly more money than they could provide themselves.
What Parton leaves behind extends beyond the music catalogue and businesses that made her rich.
Bono: Making other people spend
Bono, whose fortune is estimated at around $700 million (R11 billion) has taken a different approach to philanthropy: using his fame and influence to persuade governments and some of the world’s biggest companies to spend their money as well as committing his own. His activism stretches back decades, from famine relief in Ethiopia to the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt cancellation.
He later co-founded the ONE Campaign, which advocates for investment in health and economic development, particularly in Africa. ONE says its campaigning has helped secure more than $1 trillion (R1 trillion) in new investment since 2004.
In 2006, Bono and Bobby Shriver founded (RED), bringing companies into the fight against HIV/Aids through commercial partnerships rather than simply asking for donations. It has since generated more than $800 million (R13 million) for the Global Fund. Bono’s particular achievement, then, is not simply how much he has personally given away, but how much he has persuaded others to spend.
Celebrities who give back in a way that speaks to their own experience.
Elton John: Against HIV/Aids
Elton John, whose fortune is estimated at around £480 million (R10.5 billion) has spent more than three decades putting his money and celebrity behind the fight against HIV/Aids. The Elton John AIDS Foundation, which he established in 1992, says it has raised more than $660 million (R 10.7 billion) and funded more than 3,200 projects across 108 countries.
More recently, its work has focused on reaching people who remain particularly vulnerable to HIV and are often poorly served by existing health systems.
In 2025 alone, the foundation said its programmes reached more than 523,000 people with HIV services across 68 countries, while awarding more than $18 million (R291 million) through 44 grants.
Unlike Bono’s model of using advocacy to unlock enormous pools of public and corporate money, John’s story is perhaps most remarkable for its longevity: more than three decades of sustained attention, fundraising and investment in fighting one disease.
Michael J. Fox: Parkinson’s is a mission
Michael J. Fox was just 29 when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991, years before he publicly revealed the diagnosis in 1998. In 2000, the Back to the Future star launched the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has since become a major force in funding research into the disease.
The foundation says it has invested around $3 billion (48 billion) in research programmes worldwide. Among its most significant projects is a long-running study collecting biological samples and clinical data from thousands of participants.
That work contributed to a major breakthrough in 2023, when researchers identified a biomarker capable of detecting the biological signs of Parkinson’s in living people, potentially even before symptoms emerge. Fox turned the disease that transformed his own life into a decades-long effort to change its course for millions of others.
The millions celebrities have donated.
Rihanna: Building resilience
Rihanna, whose fortune is estimated at around $1 billion (R16 billion) founded the Clara Lionel Foundation in 2012 in honour of her grandparents, Clara and Lionel Braithwaite.
What began with an investment in radiotherapy equipment at Barbados’ Queen Elizabeth Hospital has grown into an organisation focused on climate resilience, disaster response, health, education and women’s entrepreneurship.
The foundation says it has distributed more than $100 million (R1,6 billion) in grants since 2012 and mobilised billions more, with its work spanning the Caribbean, East Africa and the US South.
Increasingly, the emphasis is not simply on responding after disaster strikes but helping vulnerable communities prepare beforehand, including strengthening health facilities against extreme weather.
Rihanna has effectively turned the wealth generated by her music and Fenty empire into an institution designed to help communities withstand the next crisis, not merely recover from the last.
Matt Damon: Clean water
Matt Damon’s philanthropic focus began after he witnessed the water crisis first-hand in sub-Saharan Africa. He founded H2O Africa in 2006 and, three years later, joined forces with water and sanitation expert Gary White to create Water.org.
Rather than simply building wells, the organisation pioneered a financing model that helps people access small, affordable loans to install taps, toilets and other water infrastructure at home. Water.org says its work has now reached more than 88 million people with safe water or sanitation, including almost 10 million in the past year alone.
Damon’s contribution has been to attach his considerable celebrity to an idea designed to make philanthropic money go further: using finance to unlock vastly greater amounts of capital so families can secure something most people take for granted – a tap and a toilet.
Michael Jordan: Back home
Basketball legend Michael Jordan has turned part of the fortune he built on and off the court into healthcare for communities that struggle to access it.
Since 2017, Jordan has given $27 million (436.9 million) to Novant Health, funding medical clinics serving vulnerable communities in Charlotte and his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, and, most recently, a neuroscience institute named after his mother.
Jordan’s giving stretches well beyond healthcare. Jordan has supported Make-A-Wish since 1989, personally granting hundreds of wishes before marking his 60th birthday in 2023 with a $10 million (R161.8 million) donation – the largest individual gift in the organisation’s history.
For one of sport’s greatest-ever stars, much of Jordan’s philanthropy has been strikingly local: putting millions of his own dollars back into communities in the state that helped raise him.
LeBron James: His promise
LeBron James has concentrated much of his philanthropy on children growing up in Akron, Ohio, where his own childhood was marked by instability and financial hardship.
James’ LeBron James Family Foundation established the I PROMISE programme in 2011 and later partnered with Akron Public Schools to open the I PROMISE School in 2018 for children at risk of falling behind academically.
The programme now serves more than 1,400 students, providing support and mentoring through school and beyond. Its approach extends beyond the classroom, with initiatives designed to support entire families and the wider community.
For a man who routinely describes himself as “just a kid from Akron”, the focus has remained remarkably close to home: using the wealth and influence generated by basketball to give children growing up where he did opportunities he never had.
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