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.
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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:
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:
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:
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.