In 1945, she created the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, a philanthropic organization supporting education and healthcare across the American South.
In 1945, Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans formally established the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, a charitable foundation designed to channel her considerable fortune, built through her stake in Coca-Cola bottling enterprises, into lasting philanthropic causes. Although the precise month and day of the foundation's creation are not documented in available sources, the year 1945 is consistently cited by institutional histories.
The foundation focused its giving on higher education, particularly institutions serving women, as well as healthcare and nursing education throughout the Southeastern United States. This reflected Lettie's own experience as a woman who, despite limited formal educational opportunities in her own youth, rose to extraordinary influence in business and wished to ensure future generations of women would have greater access to education.
The creation of this foundation, alongside a companion foundation established in her name (the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation, honoring her first husband's surname), cemented a dual philanthropic legacy that has endured for nearly eighty years. These foundations have collectively distributed tens of millions of dollars in scholarships and grants to colleges, universities, and nursing programs across Virginia, Georgia, and neighboring states. Institutions such as Mercer University, Samford University, Chowan University, Gardner-Webb University, and the University of Mary Washington continue to administer scholarship funds bearing her name, a direct and continuing legacy of her 1945 act of philanthropy.