ACM Lifting Lives: 20 Years of Charitable Support for the Country Community

While the Academy of Country Music has fostered charitable giving for decades, its philanthropic partner, ACM Lifting Lives , was founded 20 years ago to create an entity dedicated to such work. Ever since, it has funded programs to help advance music’s relationship with health and serve members of the country music community. Dating back to its 2006 launch, ACM Lifting Lives has donated over $12 million to more than 150 causes, with highlights including a music camp for those with Williams Syndrome and the Diane Holcomb Emergency Relief Fund, which supports those in the country music space affected by emergency situations like illness, injury or natural disasters.

With only three full-time staff members, ACM Lifting Lives is buoyed by the full ACM team. “We couldn’t do it without [the ACM] staff leaning in and providing supplemental support for marketing, finance, events and more,” says ACM Lifting Lives executive director Taylor Wolf, who stepped into the role full-time last summer after joining the organization in 2019 as a coordinator. “But the ACM Lifting Lives team is very small and nimble. We’ve helped thousands of individuals.”

As Wolf explains, ACM Lifting Lives has evolved over the years. “Unfortunately, you can’t help everyone at one moment in time,” she says. “So we made it a point to narrow our mission a couple of years back to deepen impact.”

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These days, ACM Lifting Lives is focused on two populations in particular. The first is those working within the country music space, no matter the job, who it supports through efforts including the Diane Holcomb Emergency Relief Fund. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ACM Lifting Lives also used its resources to help those in the country community make ends meet, assisting them with expenses such as groceries and rent — an initiative both Wolf and ACM CEO Damon Whiteside point to as a highlight of the organization’s work.

“We’ve had so much feedback over the years about that and how that made a difference in people’s lives, helped them stay in Nashville, helped them stay on their career path, all those kinds of things,” Whiteside says. “That’s what I love about ACM Lifting Lives — we can actually help people individually like that in times of need.”

Wolf adds, “As soon as they got help from ACM Lifting Lives, it was the catalyst to start seeing some change. The emergency grants are really meaningful to me.”

As Whiteside puts it, mental health is also a “major mission” for ACM Lifting Lives, and its efforts focused on harnessing music’s therapeutic potential take many forms. “That could be veteran programs that are using songwriting as an outlet, that could be bedside performances at hospitals, that could be serving children at summer camps that maybe have a shared disability, and music helps overcome something for them,” Wolf says. “Music can really light up the brain for everyone. But for certain populations, it has even more of a therapeutic connection. So we take care of our community, so that they can help continue to make music and put it out into the world.”

Several years ago, ACM Lifting Lives provided a grant to help fund a music therapy program for multiple sclerosis patients, where it teamed up with the Multiple Sclerosis Achievement Center at the University of Kansas to study the effects of music on MS patients.

While the Recording Academy has its own charitable program, MusiCares, ACM Lifting Lives targets those working specifically within country music — whether they be artists, ticket-takers, bus drivers, guitar techs, business managers or anyone else within the genre’s ecosystem.

“I would say we’re working a similar goal to MusiCares, and I think, in the nonprofit space in particular, it’s not a competition,” Wolf says, noting that ACM Lifting Lives works closely with programs like MusiCares and Music Health Alliance to benefit those in need. “If one group could solve all the problems of the world, they would. But unfortunately, the need is too great. So the more of us that are committed to working against the struggles that people are facing, the better.”

Each year, ACM Lifting Lives partners with artists for charitable events. In 2025, for ACM’s 60th anniversary, it honored Brooks & Dunn at the ACM Lifting Lives “Play Something Country” Gala in Frisco, Texas, where Keith Urban, Cody Johnson and Lainey Wilson were among those to take the stage and cover some of the duo’s songs.

“Music can really define things for us, and what’s so special about a gala like that is you get to hear from someone that you look up to as a musician,” Wolf says.

“ACM Lifting Lives is a little bit of everyone that’s committed to caring and giving and talking about it for the last 20 years,” she continues. “It’s just an honor to be a part of it.”

Additional reporting by Deborah Evans Price.

The ACM Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/acm-lifting-lives-20-years-country-music-community-support-1236244355/)._