The Arcadia Philanthropic Trust is a charitable fund based in the UK founded by Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Established in 2002, the organisation provides grants on a worldwide basis focusing on numerous projects outside the UK. The primary focus of the organisation is to help record cultural heritage, conserve and restore nature, and promote open access to knowledge.

Since 2002, the fund has provided more than $1.3 billion in projects around the world. According to the OECD, Arcadia's financing for 2023 development increased by 194.2% to US$121.4 million.

The trust has a donor board of five members and an advisory board of ten members.

History Since its inception, Arcadia Philanthropic Trust has awarded grants totaling $1.3 billion. It previously made grants for work to promote human rights and philanthropy, but today focuses on three funding areas: culture, nature and open access.

Its supported causes have been the preservation of endangered culture and nature and the provision of open access. The trust made its first grant in 2002 to the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme.

Description

Culture Arcadia's culture grants support digital documentation of cultural heritage that is poorly recorded and under threat. Arcadia's grants to the culture funding area totalled $388 million in February 2026. Example grants include: +RecipientTitle of GrantDate of GrantValue ($USD)DescriptionBerlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der WissenschaftenEndangered Languages Documentation Programme202124,990,000To support a grant programme to document languages which are at risk of extinction, and build a digital archive to make the results freely available online.UCLAModern Endangered Archives Programme202213,000,000To support a grant programme to digitize endangered printed materials, manuscripts, photographs, audio-visual recordings and born-digital materials from the 20th and 21st centuries, and make the digitized materials freely available online.University of Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archaeological ResearchMapping Africa's Endangered Archeological Sites and Monuments20247,125,000To carry out large-scale documentation of heritage sites in Sub-Saharan Africa and to make the results freely available online.University of Oxford - School of ArchaeologyEndangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa20242,750,000To document endangered archaeological heritage in the Middle East and North Africa using satellite imagery and on-the-ground surveys and make the data freely available online.Hill Museum and Manuscript LibraryDigitization of Manuscripts in Africa and Asia20215,492,813To digitize endangered manuscripts in libraries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia and make them freely available online.Wende MuseumWende Endowment20207,500,000Towards a permanent endowment for the Wende Museum with proceeds specifically for collections care and acquisitions.

Nature Arcadia’s nature grants support solutions to the global biodiversity and climate crises. Arcadia’s grants to the nature funding area totalled $614m in February 2026. Example grants include: +RecipientTitle of GrantDate of GrantValue ($USD)DescriptionEuropean Open Rivers ProgrammeEuropean Open Rivers Programme202150,575,000To support a grant programme to remove redundant dams, weirs and other river barriers across Europe, so that rivers can flow naturally and biodiversity can flourish.University of Cambridge – Cambridge Conservation InitiativeEndangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme202371,648,800To support a grant programme to support large-scale projects to restore biodiversity-rich terrestrial and marine habitats across Europe at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.JournalismFund EuropeEarth Investigations Programme202113,685,000To support a grant programme for environmental investigative journalism on European affairs inside and outside Europe.ClientEarthBiodiversity and Habitat Governance20236,250,000To support ClientEarth’s work using legal systems to develop and enforce biodiversity and habitat governance.Oceana IncMarine Wildlife Protection201810,500,000To influence policy that helps to protect and restore marine life and ecosystems in high biodiversity areas.Oceans 5Joint 30x30 Funding Initiative202325,000,000To support a joint grant programme with Bloomberg Philanthropies for work towards the target of protecting 30% of the world’s marine and coastal areas by 2030.

Open access Arcadia’s open access grants help make information that “should legally and morally be free for anyone to access” available for free online. Arcadia’s grants to open access totalled $208m in December 2025. Example grants include: +RecipientTitle of GrantDate of GrantValue ($USD)DescriptionLancaster UniversityOpen Book Futures20233,429,600To develop services and resources to support open-access book publishing by small-to-medium-sized publishers, non-profits and scholarly libraries.Confederation of Open Access RepositoriesProject Notify20224,000,000To help scholarly communities organise peer-review of preprints and working papers through a not-for-profit, university-governed ecosystem that bypasses commercial publishers.Our ResearchTools to steer academic systems to open research20214,500,000To provide tools and data which make open-access research easier to find and use and to help libraries and researchers make better decisions.Public.Resource.OrgCore funding20205,000,000To enable Public.Resource.Org to expand its work in three key areas: access to edicts of government, text and data mining and access to knowledge.Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyArcadia Open Access Fund202310,000,000Towards a matched endowment to support open-access programmes at MIT Press, including open monographs, open journals and open publishing services.Code for Science and SocietyThe IOI Fund for Network Adoption20251,800,000To establish a grant programme to fund networks that support open access to research.

Discretionary The Arcadia Philanthropic Trust in 2015 provided $25 million to Yale University to renovate the Hall of Graduate Studies, enabling the university to co-locate the dispersed humanities departments under one roof to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. Baldwin and Rausing have asked that the building should be named in tribute to the service of David Swensen (who built Yale's endowment from $1.3 billion to $23.9 billion) in tribute to his service.

Arcadia gave £5 million to the Illuminated River Foundation in 2017 for a commissioned art installation of light to 15 of Central London's bridges along the River Thames. When the project is completed, it would be the longest piece of commissioned art in the world at 2.5 miles long.

Discontinued themes Before 2009 the Arcadia Philanthropic Trust was involved in supporting human rights. It supported organisations that helped refugee scholars, educated disadvantaged children in Africa, and conducted women's rights advocacy. In 2005, Arcadia provided a $5 million grant to the Mvule Trust to provide bursaries to young women in Uganda so they can go to secondary school. The grant and trust gave 75% of scholarships to girls and by 2007 and the trust had supported the education of 1,868 children.

Arcadia has provided a total of $6 million in 2005–2006 to the Human Rights Watch (US) to help their empirical research into persecution of women, and its fact gathering, press releases, advocacy and lobbying.

Grant statistics and graphs The following table breaks down Arcadia's largest grants and provides a description of the purpose of the grant.

+ Grants by Value ($USD)RecipientTitle of GrantDate of GrantValue ($USD)Type of GrantDescription of GrantUniversity of CambridgeEndangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme202371,648,800NatureTo support a grant programme to support large-scale projects to restore biodiversity-rich terrestrial and marine habitats across Europe at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.European Open Rivers ProgrammeEuropean Open Rivers Programme202150,750,000NatureTo support a grant programme to remove redundant dams, weirs and other river barriers across Europe, so that rivers can flow naturally and biodiversity can flourish.University of CambridgeCambridge Conservation Initiative: Endangered Landscapes Programme202035,059,365NatureTo support a grant programme to support large-scale projects to restore biodiversity-rich habitats across Europe at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.School of Oriental and African StudiesEndangered Languages Documentation Programme200233,851,813CulturalTo support a grant programme to document languages which are at risk of extinction, and build a digital archive to make the results freely available online. University of CambridgeCambridge Conservation Initiative:  Endangered Landscapes Programme201831,441,100NatureTo support a grant programme to support large-scale projects to restore biodiversity-rich habitats across Europe at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.Fauna & Flora InternationalHalcyon Programmes and core institutional support201725,960,684NatureTo provide core support for Fauna & Flora and support its work with local partners and communities to protect and restore important at-risk and biodiversity-rich natural habitats.Legacy Landscapes FundLegacy Landscapes Fund match grants202325,000,000NatureMatch funding to create long-term endowments for the conservation of large landscapes centred on Chiribiquete (Colombia), Makira-Masoala (Madagascar) and Tambrauw (Indonesia).Oceans 5Joint 30x30 Funding Initiative202325,000,000NatureTo support a joint grant programme with Bloomberg Philanthropies for work towards the target of protecting 30% of the world’s marine and coastal areas by 2030.Yale UniversityThe Hall of Graduate Studies201725,000,000DiscretionaryTo refurbish the Hall of Graduate Studies and to support work to transform it into a centre for the humanities at Yale.Yale UniversityInstitute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage201125,000,000CulturalTo build a new cultural heritage conservation and digitization centre at Yale University.

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