The Walton Family Foundation has been made aware of a fraudulent email claiming to be from our Executive Director, Buddy Philpot. Similar versions of the email claim to be from "Peter W." or "Horace S." The email may look as if it is coming from a Foundation-related website or from an email address of info@waltonfamilyfoundation.com. The message indicates that the recipient has been chosen for a $5 million grant. The Foundation did not send this email. We are preparing legal action to stop this behavior.

The Walton Family Foundation is proud of our decades-long track record investing in real solutions to tough environmental challenges. Over the last five years alone, we’ve invested $351 million in efforts to support real, lasting ecological restoration in the Gulf of Mexico, to tackle the water policy challenges in the Colorado River Basin, to conserve some of the most ecologically rich seascapes around the globe and to push for sustainable fisheries management that benefits fishing communities and families. Our grantees include many of the nation’s leading environmental groups, as well as local organizations working on behalf of the communities that depend directly on healthy rivers, oceans and wildlife.

KIPP Delta Public Charter Schools announced today that it has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation to fund a two-year pilot program to help prepare more students throughout the Delta for college.

Investing in Home-Grown Vision to Produce World-Class Results

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday voted to establish a strategic partnership with the state’s two leading foundations committed to increasing educational attainment. Through the ForwARd initiative, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and Walton Family Foundation will lead the development of a comprehensive plan to strengthen public education in the state targeted on recommendations for academically distressed schools and districts.

The California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles issued an historic decision in Vergara v. California, striking down five harmful provisions of the California Education Code as unconstitutional. According to the Court, the laws in question - laws that govern teacher tenure, dismissal, and layoffs - impose substantial harm on California's students by forcing administrators to push passionate, inspiring teachers out of the school system and keep grossly ineffective teachers in front of students year after year.

A longtime leader in environmental science and conservation who has worked for nearly three decades to preserve ecosystems across the globe has been selected to direct the environmental grant-making efforts of one of the country’s largest foundations.

We applaud the USDA’s announcement today that the Colorado and Mississippi River basins will be included as critical conservation areas in the agency’s new Regional Conservation Partnership Program. The new initiative, part of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, is a Farm Bill conservation program that will focus on locally-driven projects that restore rivers, improve water quality and support economies across the country.

Today’s profile of the Walton Family Foundation on the front page of The New York Times draws much-needed attention to our country’s most pressing issue: improving educational opportunity for the families and children who need it most.

Largest private funder of charter school startups supports the opening of roughly one in four charter schools in the nation since 1997.