Robert Albert Jolley, Sr. (Bob to his friends and colleagues, Albert to his family) grew up on a farm in rural South Georgia. Albert, the oldest of five children born in 1890, didn’t have a taste for farming. He left home at age 16 to find work and, hopefully, send money back home to his family.

From the beginning of his career, Albert put in the time and effort to earn a reputation as an honest and diligent worker. Word about Albert’s exceptional work ethic spread quickly. Mr. Lowery, a local businessman, was impressed by the young man’s dedication and entrepreneurial enthusiasm and asked Albert to run his Chero Cola (eventually Royal Crown Cola) bottling business in Carrollton, Georgia. He gladly accepted, and in just a few years, backed by investors impressed with his business acumen, Albert could buy the company.

Shortly thereafter, Albert met and married Rucker Tweedy, then a schoolteacher. Albert purchased a bottling facility in Anderson, South Carolina, he and Rucker moved their family and business from Georgia to the Upstate in 1919.

All the while, even as they struggled to keep the business afloat during the Great Depression and support their three children—Bob, Mamie, and Jimmy—the couple stayed true to their roots and sent whatever money they could back to family in Georgia.

Their hardscrabble childhoods in rural South Georgia taught Albert and Rucker firsthand the devastating toll that illness, untimely death, alcoholism, melancholia, drought, and the boll weevil could have on families. The couple knew one thing to be true: help from a friend at the right moment could change everything.

Thus, in 1947, Albert and Rucker established an assistance fund for their employees to act as a safety net during crises.

And with that, The Jolley Foundation was born.

In the 1970s, Albert and Rucker’s three children took over the foundation. Bob, Mamie, and Jimmy participated in the community as volunteers and civic leaders and were generous to the foundation and their personal philanthropy. They served on mental health, education, human services, and arts and culture nonprofit boards.

Over the years, the three siblings began expanding upon their parents’ vision and values, including empathy and the belief that everyone deserves a life of dignity, gratitude for what they received, and a responsibility to steward those resources in the service of the Greenville community; and a quiet humility about their philanthropy.

Perhaps the siblings' greatest shared passion was education. Having grown up in the segregated Jim Crow South, they witnessed its inequities and brutality. They believed in the power of education to help alleviate poverty, discrimination, and injustice.

They supported scholarships for underrepresented, low-income youth throughout South Carolina’s higher education institutions. Mamie gave the founding endowment to Bridges to a Brighter Future at Furman University, a nationally recognized comprehensive college access and success program for high school students whose potential outdistances their circumstances.

In 2014, with the encouragement of Jimmy Jolley, the surviving Jolley sibling, the Jolley Foundation board took on the work of succession planning. James McDuffie Bruce (Duff) and Jolley Bruce Christman assumed leadership, joined by Duff’s son, Mac Bruce, and Jolley’s son, Andrew Christman.

Shortly after that, they hired an executive director to help the foundation be more responsive to community needs.

In 2022, Meliah Bowers Jefferson became the Executive Director, bringing her extensive legal, advocacy, and community leadership experience to the foundation. Under Meliah’s guidance, Jolley aims to invest in initiatives that empower and amplify underserved voices, create opportunities to close economic and wealth disparities and eliminate social inequities while maintaining accessible support for nonprofits.