Walmart Heir Jim Walton Gives $1.2 Billion to Unnamed Charity

Walmart heir Jim Walton gave nearly 11.2 million shares of Walmart stock valued at a total of more than $1.2 billion to charity late last week, according to Securities Exchange Commission filings.

While Walton didn’t indicate the name of the nonprofit receiving the gift, and a spokeswoman declined to comment on it, the money is probably going to the Walton Family Foundation. The $3.6 billion grant maker was started by Walton’s parents, Sam and Helen Walton, who founded the retail giants Walmart in 1962 and Sam’s Club in 1983.

The foundation primarily backs efforts to improve K-12 education, river and ocean conservation groups and programs, and charities in Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. It has been funded in recent years by gifts from Jim Walton and his siblings Alice and Robson. It gave out nearly $596 million in grants last year, according to the foundation’s financial reports.

Jim Walton, whose net worth stands at about $51 billion, according to Forbes, is chief executive of the Walton family’s Arvest Bank and chairman of Community Publishers, which owns newspapers and websites in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Sam Walton started the publishing company in 1982 after he bought the Benton County Daily Record.

While the 71-year-old Jim Walton has been a quiet donor for most of his life, he appeared on the Chronicle’s 2015 list of the biggest donors for a $91 million gift he gave that year.