Major art collectors Warren Stephens, Ken Griffin, and Paul Singer, as well as Charles and Helen Schwab were among the top individual donors to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fundraising committee.
The top individual donor to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration was Stephens, who gave $4 million and is a major donor to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, according to data released by the Federal Election Commission and new analysis from Open Secrets, a nonprofit research and government transparency group based in Washington, DC.
In 2023 the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts announced that Warren Stephens and his wife, Harriet, endowed eight galleries. The couple also chair the museum’s building committee and foundation board, as well as cochairing its successful capital campaign, which raised more than $160 million.
Until last year, Stephens was the CEO of his namesake financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock. Trump nominated him to be ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland in December. Stephens was confirmed to the position by the US Senate on April 29.
Other seven-figure donations from individuals to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration included $1.1 million from Top 200 collectors Charles and Helen Schwab, $1 million from Top 200 collector and Citadel founder Ken Griffin, as well as $1 million from art collector and Elliott Management founder Paul Singer.
Federal filings showed Trump raised more than $239 million for his second inauguration, far exceeding the $107 million raised in 2017. By comparison, Joe Biden raised $61 million for his inauguration in 2021, and Barack Obama raised $44 million and $53 million for his inaugurations in 2013 and 2009, respectively.
Many large US companies also made donations to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, including donations of $1 million from Amazon, which was founded by Top 200 collector Jeff Bezos; $1 million from Blackrock Financial Management Inc, whose cofounder and CEO is Top 200 collector Larry Fink; and $1 million from Tyson Shared Services Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods.
The current chairman of Tyson Foods, John H. Tyson, is also chairman of the board at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The institution awards the annual Don Tyson Prize for American Art, worth $200,000, and named for the former chairman and CEO of Tyson Foods.
In addition to donations for President Trump’s inauguration fundraising committee, data from the FEC and Open Secrets show that Griffin donated $100 million to help elect conservatives, the fifth-largest amount for individual contributions to federal election spending for 2024.
Griffin’s largest disclosed donations were to the Senate Leadership Fund, on four separate occasions, totaling $30 million. He also made donations totaling $15 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, $15 million to the Keystone Renewal PAC and $10 million to Maryland’s Future, a single-candidate super political action committee in support of Republican Larry Hogan for the US Senate.
By comparison, Singer donated $64.15 million (including a total of $27 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, and $14.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund), Stephens donated $23.4 million (including a total of $5.5 million to Senate Leadership Fund, $2.91 million to SFA Fund, and $2.75 million to Congressional Leadership Fund), while the Schwabs donated $9.3 million (including $6 million for the Senate Leadership Fund and $3 million for the Congressional Leadership Fund).
Last month, Griffin told Semafor senior editor Gina Chon the US was “eroding” its brand as a result of many of the economic policy changes under Trump. Announcements of tariffs have resulted in volatility in the stock markets, a sell-off in US government bonds, and left art professionals scrambling.
Volatility in global stock markets also resulted in the net worth of many Top 200 collectors declining by billions of dollars, including a drop of more than $6.6 billion for Bezos between April 3 and April 7.
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