Wallis Annenberg was passionate about creating spaces, opportunities, and access where people could connect, learn, and thrive. From community institutions to bold new ventures, she believed philanthropy should enrich lives, strengthen the civic fabric, and inspire others to pitch in.
But what truly set Wallis apart as a philanthropist wasn’t only the wide scope of her giving. It was her extraordinary commitment to ensuring that the causes she cared about most deeply would endure beyond her lifetime.
Too often, legacy planning is an afterthought in philanthropy. Donors may devote relentless energy to giving during their lifetimes, yet when it comes to preparing for what happens after they are gone, there is far too little structure or clarity. The result can be confusion or drift, with those left behind guessing at donor intent or struggling to keep a mission alive without direction. Wallis was determined to avoid that fate.
That is why, in 2011, she created the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation with a single purpose: to ensure her vision would not just endure but expand well beyond her lifetime. Distinct from the Annenberg Foundation — the family foundation her father, Walter Annenberg, established more than 35 years ago, and which now continues under the stewardship of her children and grandchildren — the Legacy Foundation was designed to provide a lasting home not only for the causes she supported during her lifetime but also for the broader vision of community, connection, and care that guided her philanthropy.
Perhaps most remarkable is how early she began preparing this structure and clarity.
Those who knew Wallis well understood that once she had done her research and made a decision, she was going to see it through with excellence. That same determination shaped the way she built the Legacy Foundation, step by step. Over more than 15 years, Wallis took deliberate, methodical steps to ensure the Legacy Foundation would be fully prepared when the time came. That moment arrived on July 28, 2025, when she passed away after a long battle with lung cancer.
Wallis hoped that the process of building her Legacy Foundation would offer a roadmap for others.
Establish Structure Early and Invest in Its Strength
Wallis created the Legacy Foundation in 2011, years before it would be needed, giving her the chance to shape it according to her vision. She devoted more than 15 years to building the Foundation’s financial and organizational capacity, ensuring it would be independent, resilient, and able to act with purpose. This included:
- Installing her hand-picked board beginning in 2011 and carefully adding trusted advisors along the way.
- Holding regular board meetings each year to establish a strong culture of governance guided by her leadership.
- Creating Audit and Investment Committees to ensure rigorous oversight.
- Meticulously planning grant resources to guarantee that her legacy initiatives would have sustained funding beyond her lifetime.
Define the Mission Through Practice
While she was alive, Wallis launched flagship projects that anchored the Legacy Foundation’s role and values. In 2017, she opened Annenberg PetSpace, an innovative center for animal adoption and education. Five years later, she opened Annenberg GenSpace, a bold reimagining of aging and community. Both were expressions of her deepest passions, and together they became blueprints for the kind of work the Legacy Foundation would carry forward.
Document the Vision and Leave a Roadmap
Her preparation extended beyond projects and finances. Nearly a decade ago, she engaged archivists to catalog the artifacts and lessons from her years of giving, ensuring her story, values, and methods would continue to guide the Foundation long into the future.
Equally significant, Wallis provided explicit direction on the causes that mattered most to her and why. She made sure the Foundation had both the resources and the mandate to carry them forward. Among her directives:
- Conservation: Complete the Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, the world’s largest urban wildlife crossing, now under construction across ten lanes of freeway north of Los Angeles.
- The Arts: Continue support for the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts so that world-class performances remain accessible to the community.
- Education: Support her cutting-edge multimedia center at USC, Wallis Annenberg Hall, as a state-of-the-art training ground for future journalists and communications scholars.
- Civic Leadership: Invest in leaders and partnerships tackling urgent challenges such as food insecurity, housing, and access to healthcare.
- Animal Welfare: Advance the human-animal bond through innovative adoption and education programs.
- Aging and Longevity: Address the persistent isolation of older adults through projects like GenSpace, fostering wellness, connection, and learning.
That foresight is why, in the weeks since her passing, the Legacy Foundation has been able to move quickly and with purpose. At her express direction, we announced a $10 million gift to causes closest to her heart: the Annenberg Community Beach House, student internships at USC’s Wallis Annenberg Hall, free and low-cost performances at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and continued support for the Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Fund. It was her way of signaling that her commitments did not end with her passing and of reminding us all that her legacy lives on in action, not only in name.
Legacy planning is one of philanthropy’s greatest challenges. Wallis’s foresight offers a model others might study and consider. She understood that generosity in life, no matter how great, is not enough. Without clear leadership, and intensive planning, even the most well-intentioned legacies can drift or diminish. Her answer was simple but powerful: make your intentions explicit, build the infrastructure to sustain them, and invest early in defining the work that will carry them forward.
In doing so, Wallis left a gift that keeps on giving: a living blueprint for how philanthropy can last beyond a lifetime.
Aradhna Malhotra Oliphant is chief operations and strategy officer for the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation.
