Dorothy Morris

2020/2021/2022 Inductee

Dorothy Morris is a trailblazing philanthropist who has focused her attention and more than three decades on the fine arts in her home state of Arkansas. She has expanded the Morris Foundation’s reach to encompass every area of need in the state, from health and well-being to cultural preservation and the Fine Arts.

A native of Malvern, Morris developed a career in real estate and business in Dallas. Upon returning to Arkansas in the 1980s, she met and married Walter Morris, a fellow philanthropist and founder of the Morris Foundation. A move to Hot Springs turned her focus to the city’s Historic Downtown Arts District. After her husband passed away, Dorothy created a memorial chapel in his honor at Lake DeGray, beginning a longstanding partnership with Arkansas Sheriffs’ Youth Ranch.

Dorothy’s stewardship of the Morris Foundation produced her signature achievement — the Hot Springs Giving Circle. Working with fellow philanthropist Don Munro and the Munro Foundation, she helped create and maintain the Giving Circle, a form of “participatory philanthropy” that has distributed nearly one million dollars to the surrounding community since its inception in 2008. During 2018’s Arkansas Gives event, the Morris Foundation raised a half million dollars in one day for Arkansas nonprofits.

The Morris Foundation has been instrumental in supporting Arkansas institutions of higher learning, from the University of Central Arkansas’s Shakespeare program; Henderson State and Ouachita Baptist University programming, to National Park College, where Morris joined with Don Munro to co-chair the fundraising drive for the Dierks Center for Nursing and Health Science. In 2019, the Morris Foundation participated in a fundraising campaign for Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, which resulted in the new Morris Concert Room.

The Morris Foundation’s commitment to seed-funding has resulted in new nonprofit organizations which grow and spin off successful programs to become self-sustaining. The Morris Foundation also shepherds award-winning successes like Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance (which Dorothy co-founded along with Don Munro); Hot Springs Children’s Dance Theatre; Cutwell for Kids and Emergent Arts educational resource nonprofits; Cooper-Anthony Mercy Child Advocacy Center and Levi Hospital; Hope Outreach and Eleanor Klugh Jackson House food banks; Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival; Hot Springs Music Festival and Hot Springs Jazz Festival.

The Morris Foundation’s reach extends statewide and regionally, from supporting the Mid-America Arts Alliance and Arkansas Food Bank to funding research at Little Rock’s University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and from Opera in the Rock to UCA’s annual Shakespeare festival and back again. The Morris Foundation’s AETN film credits include the documentaries: “Precious Memories: Historic Rural Churches of Arkansas;” “City of Visitors: The Story of Hot Springs” and the Emmy Award-winning “Champion Trees,” in collaboration with Hot Springs artist and author Linda Williams Palmer.

Her community involvement meant lending her talents to several boards and committees such as the Hot Springs Music Festival, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, where she served as Arkansas director, the Arkansas Coalition for Excellence, the YCMA and the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund, just to name a few.

Morris has received numerous awards and recognitions for her contributions to the community, including the Governor’s Individual Patron of the Arts Award in 2003 and the Woman of the Year in Philanthropy from the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas in 2013.

Photo credited by Michael Mueller