About Bama works

Established by Dave Matthews Band in 1999, the Bama Works Fund supports a wide range of efforts to build a more equitable, resilient, and environmentally sound world. While the fund primarily focuses on effecting positive change in the band’s homebase of Charlottesville, Virginia, it has also engaged in a great number of national and international causes over the years, including everything from natural disaster relief to voting-rights projects to intersectional movements such as the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. To date, Bama Works has raised more than $65 million and awarded over 2,500 grants, ultimately serving as an invaluable source of sustenance for an incredible diversity of charitable programs and initiatives.

Since its inception, Bama Works has operated under the philosophy that meaningful and long-lasting change begins in the community. With funds administered through the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF), its twice-yearly grant cycle has advanced the work of organizations committed to caring for the environment, protecting underserved populations, fostering educational opportunities, and sustaining the arts and creative sectors. In a landmark undertaking, Bama Works partnered with Red Light Management in 2018 to make a collective $5 million catalyzing grant to help combat the city’s affordable-housing crisis.  Through a resident-led process, the plan is for all of Charlottesville’s public-housing units to be replaced while building significant affordable housing. The redevelopment project was launched soon after Dave Matthews Band headlined and organized A Concert for Charlottesville—a September 2017 event held to benefit victims of violence at the white-supremacist rally that August. Featuring performances from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, Pharrell Williams, Justin Timberlake, Chris Stapleton and more, the concert raised nearly $2 million for victim relief and racial-justice causes and inspired the band to double down on their commitment to addressing the impacts of systemic racism.

The band has also hosted, or participated in, numerous benefit concerts including Farm Aid, A Concert for Island Relief, Stand for Standing Rock, Bridge School, Hurricane Sandy Relief Concert, a Concert for Virginia Tech, Stand Up to Cancer, Hurricane Katrina benefit at Red Rocks, Soulshine Benefit Concert and so many more.

More recently, Bama Works pledged $1 million to a grant program designed to help Charlottesville nonprofits recover and revitalize in the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on creating a more vibrant region in part by correcting longstanding inequities.  Since the beginning of Covid-19, the band has raised over $500k for José Andres’ World Central Kitchen, to help combat food insecurity.  DMB also launched the “Drive-In series,” an online weekly streaming event featuring live shows from the band’s archive—the series raised over $600k for a variety of organizations.

Designated a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador in 2019, Dave Matthews Band have long embraced their role as environmental advocates. As one of the biggest touring acts in the world, they’ve offset all touring-related carbon emissions since the earliest days of the band, and in 2005 teamed up with environmental nonprofit Reverb in a trailblazing partnership known as the BamaGreen Project. Over the course of 20 tours, the project has integrated sustainability into every aspect of Dave Matthews Band’s operations, including fueling tour buses with biodiesel, eliminating single-use plastic bottles at shows, prioritizing locally grown food through its farm-to-stage catering program, and directly engaging fans in over 731,000 environmental actions. In one of their latest endeavors, Dave Matthews Band joined in The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees program, raising $2 million to plant a million trees worldwide.

Over the decades, Bama Works has also granted financial support to major organizations and movements like Farm Aid (of which Dave Matthews is on the board), Black Lives Matter, The Equal Justice Initiative, and HeadCount (a nonpartisan group that promotes voter registration and participation in democracy; DMB is their single largest funder and has registered over 30,000 voters. In addition to generating philanthropic revenue through programs like the DMB Drive-In, Dave Matthews Band have historically embedded their philanthropic ventures into the broader framework of their business, largely by directing a portion of all ticket sales toward Bama Works. As a result of that relentless dedication, the band has left an indelible impact on their community and beyond. “The generosity of Dave Matthews Band has been a constant throughout their career, and many efforts that protect the vulnerable, conserve the environment, and enrich the lives of youth would not have been possible without them,” states CACF president/CEO Brennan Gould. “They provide a great example of flexible, adaptable, and enduring philanthropy. It is an honor and pleasure to work with the Band.”