ARCADIA

Who they support

Arcadia supports work to preserve endangered cultural heritage, protect endangered ecosystems, and promote access to knowledge. Our aim is to defend the complexity of human culture and the natural world, so that coming generations can build a vibrant, resilient and green future.

Grant criteria

We proactively seek and support organizations with strong leadership, that operate in a cost-effective, collaborative, scientifically sound and ethical manner, and that share our ambitions. We are guided by our founders and rely on the expertise of our team, advisory board and networks to develop our strategy and grantmaking.

Grant details

We make few, multi-year grants. We fund operational costs, existing projects or develop partnerships to create new schemes. We build long-term relationships with our grant recipients: we replicate and expand successful projects and award repeat grants to continue outstanding work.

Analysis of Grants Made
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In this period 80 donations have been made totalling £253,737,820 to 61 organisations

  • The average annual spending of grantees has been £60 million
  • The average age of charities supported has been years.

Where are the Beneficiaries?
How big are the Recipients? ?
Which activities are being funded?
How old were the charities when supported?
Growth in Spending
(per annum over last 3 years)
Main Overlaps with other Grant Makers ?
By ValueBy Number
LUND TRUST 4% 2%
Rothschild Foundation 3% 3%
CHK Foundation 2% 5%
Greenwood Place 2% 3%
Greater London Authority 2% 2%
Tedworth Charitable Trust 2% 3%
Garfield Weston Foundation 2% 3%
John Ellerman Foundation 2% 3%
Esmee Fairbairn 2% 3%
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 2% 2%
Sole supporter: 85% by number, 88% by value.
Individual Grants Made
When Amount Annual
Spending
Grantee To be used for
01/08/2022 £3,000,000 MASTERS IN CONSERVATION LEADERSHIP - UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE To support Miriam Rothschild scholars to participate in the Cambridge Masters in Conservation Leadership.
01/08/2022 £4,641,000 £931,071,000 DEEP OCEAN STEWARDSHIP INITIATIVE (DOSI) To support the operations of the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), so that it can continue to provide evidence-based advice to inform international policy concerning the management and conservation of the deep ocean.
29/06/2022 £26,000 OF THE WILD PRODUCTIONS LTD Towards the development phase of a documentary film.
01/06/2022 £2,500,000 £6,828,331 BLUE VENTURES CONSERVATION Support for Blue Ventures’ core operations.
01/04/2022 £1,725,000 £3,389,783 GLOBAL CANOPY To provide Global Canopy with core support to target the market forces destroying nature.
01/12/2021 £103,500 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Towards advancing open access
01/10/2021 £79,730 HERITAGE AND BEYOND Towards the documentation of endangered built heritage and oral traditions in the ‘Desert of the Mamluks’, part of Cairo’s ‘City of the Dead’ necropolis.
01/10/2021 £495,354 MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE INSTITUTE To develop a publicly accessible inventory of maritime archaeological resources in Pakistan to enable future scientific research and effective heritage management.
01/09/2021 £1,190,000 THE WILDLIFE JUSTICE COMMISSION To conduct intelligence-led, undercover investigations to gather evidence, working closely with law enforcement agencies to support the investigation and prosecution of high-level wildlife crime cases.
06/08/2021 £1,000,000 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE To provide robust legal, scientific, and organizational support to help lawyers in under-resourced regions win legal victories that protect biodiversity, and to build local capacity to protect biodiversity in years to come.
01/08/2021 £50,575,000 EUROPEAN OPEN RIVERS PROGRAMME To restore endangered European rivers by supporting interventions that lead to the removal of dams and the restoration of river flow and biodiversity
31/07/2021 £325,000 GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE To develop a new software module for the Arches data management platform
31/07/2021 £1,380,000 £4,166,940 FOREST PEOPLES PROGRAMME To support the Forest Peoples Programme’s (FPP) environmental governance programme and its efforts to protect terrestrial biodiversity.
15/07/2021 £26,100 NETWORK FOR THE STUDY OF NAZISM AND THE HOLOCAUST To translate a website and exhibits on Danish Jews deportees to Theresienstadt into Czech, English, German and Swedish.
01/07/2021 £5,000,000 CREATIVE COMMONS To help more of the world’s public art galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM institutions) make their collections data and images available under open Creative Commons licences or waivers.
01/07/2021 £900,000 THEGUARDIAN.ORG To support the Age of Extinction series, a reporting project that aims to draw attention to the global biodiversity crisis. This grant will help sustain increased capacity and expand reporting on the planet’s biodiversity crisis, driving measurable impact through Guardian journalism.
01/07/2021 £24,990,000 BERLIN-BRANDENBURGISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN To support documentation of the most endangered languages around the world, and to archive and publish this material online in an open-access database.
01/07/2021 £5,000,000 BARD COLLEGE Towards the core endowment in recognition of the Bard Network's work.
01/07/2021 £5,000,000 HILL MUSEUM AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY To continue the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library’s work digitizing endangered manuscripts in Africa and Asia, and to make them available online in an open-access repository.
01/07/2021 £979,132 WIKIMEDIA DEUTSCHLAND To support technical improvements around lexicographical data. This grant will also support the globalization of the contributor base for Wikibase, to improve the inclusivity and long-term sustainability of the wiki-related software development community.
25/06/2021 £442,800 INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR CONSERVATION OF NATURE To increase the availability and quality of conservation literature online by expanding awareness and knowledge of scholarly communications.
15/06/2021 £13,685,000 JOURNALISMFUND.EU To support environmental investigative journalism focused on European affairs in and outside Europe.
01/06/2021 £100,000 MIT OPEN LEARNING To expand OpenCourseWare access and deliver engaging experiences for the many millions of smartphone-based learners. The project aims to increase OCW’s capacity to produce more rich media; reach more learners and offer more socially relevant content; and to launch new collaborations across the Open Educational Resources (OER) community to advance educational equity.
01/06/2021 £500,000 NEW VENTURE FUND To secure a national open access policy requiring immediate open access to all US federally-funded research outputs; to promote measurable changes in the ways universities and research funders incentivise and reward the open sharing of research outputs; and to catalyze actions to secure academic community control of key research communication infrastructure.
01/06/2021 £1,200,000 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY To accelerate research assessment reform by undertaking analysis and creating tools and resources to help institutions improve research assessment in the United States and Europe.
01/06/2021 £452,200 GESELLSCHAFT FüR FREIHEITSRECHTE To advance all forms of freedom of communication. This includes defending freedom of expression, information, the press, the arts and the sciences, wherever these rights are constrained by copyright and information laws.
01/06/2021 £3,470,000 CODE FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY To improve funding and resourcing for the open technology and systems that research relies on
01/06/2021 £4,500,000 OUR RESEARCH To provide tools and data which better surface open access research and to help libraries and researchers make better decisions. If successful, this will help to end ‘big deal’ subscription packages and reduce information asymmetry in library-publisher negotiations.
01/06/2021 £2,000,000 £24,042,918 FAUNA & FLORA INTERNATIONAL To enable FFI to establish the Conservation Resilience Fund, to help local conservation organisations adopt new operational models to adapt to a post-COVID-19 future.
01/06/2021 £2,000,000 WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY To establish a WCS Local Conservation Partners Fund to help build long-term capacity of select local partner groups. WCS will direct grants and capacity-building support to partners that have been impacted by COVID-19 and who seek to build more sustainable, resilient organizations.
01/06/2021 £2,500,000 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND To develop a scientific foundation for agricultural soil carbon credits.
01/06/2021 £3,630,000 INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS To bring reforms to copyright law and regulation that enable libraries to provide greater possibilities to access and use of copyrighted works. To promote reform at the European and national levels, and provide valuable examples for the rest of the world.
01/06/2021 £1,800,000 SWEDISH NATIONAL ARCHIVES To complete the digitization of the National Library of Sweden’s (NLS) holdings of all Swedish historical newspapers up to 1906.
19/04/2021 £276,000 BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON To strengthen open access to scholarly work in the humanities disciplines, allowing everyone the freedom to access academic research.
01/04/2021 £35,059,365 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE To restore a set of Europe’s degraded landscapes so that they are self-sustaining, enriched with biodiversity, resilient to climate change, and benefit both people and nature.
26/03/2021 £100,000 CHICKENSHED NYC Towards the theatre's running costs
15/01/2021 £11,075,680 £5,831,814 BRITISH MUSEUM To support a grants programme to document endangered cultural practices, focusing on material culture, namely how things are made and how they are used. The digitized materials are available for free online.
07/01/2021 £3,800,000 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW The project will produce high impact research, provide training to a global network of change makers, and connect a global expert network to a global community of researchers, libraries, museums, archives and digital rights activists active in international copyright policy making.
01/01/2021 £1,900,000 PALESTINIAN MUSEUM To digitize endangered, dispersed and inaccessible collections of documents, photographs, videos and ephemeral materials representing the culture and history of Palestine from 1800 to the present and to make them available in an open-access online archive.
01/12/2020 £100,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Towards the publication of open access monographs, and to further open access initiatives by membership and participation in other organizations advancing open access.
01/12/2020 £100,000 WENDE MUSEUM Towards the costs of running the Wende Museum.
01/12/2020 £200,000 NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY Advancing open access
01/12/2020 £250,000 WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC To help support general management, staff, IT equipment and training, fundraising and governance.
01/12/2020 £100,000 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Advancing open access
01/12/2020 £100,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY To build responsible access workflows for copyright and information policy. This grant ensures that Berkeley can continue helping scholars to use, create, and publish scholarship in ways that promote dissemination, accessibility, and impact.
01/12/2020 £100,000 YALE UNIVERSITY Advancing open access
01/12/2020 £99,750 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Advancing open access
01/11/2020 £3,000,000 £9,573,025 TRAFFIC To strengthen actions to reduce the illegal and unsustainable trade of African wild species to Asia through data gathering, information sharing, engagement and innovative interventions.
01/11/2020 £177,672 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE To help conservation practitioners to make effective decisions by publishing and disseminating evidence-based conservation strategies.
19/10/2020 £3,006,209 HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY To document monuments and heritage objects in the Kathmandu Valley, and publish them online in a searchable, free database.
01/10/2020 £1,177,050 STICHTING OPEN FUTURE To set up and support a strategic advocacy organisation that will increase the capacity of the open movement to strategically influence digital policy making in the European Union.
01/10/2020 £7,500,000 WENDE MUSEUM Towards an endowment for the Wende Museum with proceeds specifically for collections care and acquisitions.
01/09/2020 £1,887,980 £1,424,707 GLOBAL WITNESS To constrain the role of finance in the destruction of climate critical tropical forests and related human rights abuses, which is vital to combatting global climate change and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
01/09/2020 £750,000 £9,571,878 INTERNEWS To support the capacity-building of local journalists to investigate and report worldwide on the threats to biodiversity and conservation-based solutions.
25/08/2020 £6,258,309 KYOTO UNIVERSITY To document endangered heritage sites, inland and coastal, in the region from the Cham coast of Vietnam, through Indonesia, Brunei, and Sri Lanka to the Maldives.
23/06/2020 £5,000,000 PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG To enable Public.Resource.Org to expand its work in three key areas: edicts of government, text and data mining and access to knowledge.
22/06/2020 £50,000 ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS To support the development of the field of knowledge about foundations as institutions.
17/06/2020 £4,171,695 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY) To document archaeological heritage in the Middle East and North Africa using satellite imagery.
14/05/2020 £1,039,316 £22,733,144 FAUNA & FLORA INTERNATIONAL To establish an emergency response fund to support their partners on the ground most affected by COVID19.
30/04/2020 £2,423,967 MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY To create a publicly accessible database of endangered archaeological heritage in Mongolia using satellite imagery and on-the-ground survey.
08/04/2020 £500,000 UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION To support the global response to the COVID19 crisis.
07/04/2020 £1,870,000 NEW VENTURE FUND To support the Open Access Button in three key areas: to meet proven demand for tools that give libraries leverage in big deals; to compete with for-profit access tools; and to lower the cost of making papers open access.
07/04/2020 £1,500,000 OPEN SYLLABUS To enable Open Syllabus to fully explore its potential to support open learning, curricular design, student mobility, research on fields and intellectual history, and other aspects of higher education.
07/04/2020 £70,000 ZALMAN SHAZAR CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY To support the research and publication of Professor Joseph Dan's multi-volume history of Jewish mysticism and esotericism.
13/03/2020 £100,000 CHICKENSHED NYC Towards the theatre's running costs.
10/02/2020 £435,198 INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR CONSERVATION OF NATURE To establish a global Urban Alliance under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The project will develop and promote a standard set of indicators on urban ecosystem health that enable cities to identify challenges and evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts to become greener environments.
01/02/2020 £441,926 WENDE MUSEUM Digitizing approximately 40,000 pages of the most important archival material held by the Wende and putting it online.
01/01/2020 £100,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES The Library plans to put this generous contribution to good use by funding the publication of open access monographs via TOME, and to further open access initiatives by membership and participation in organizations such as Libraria.
01/01/2020 £100,000 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Advancing open access
01/01/2020 £100,000 YALE UNIVERSITY Advancing open access
01/01/2020 £200,000 NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY Advancing open access
31/12/2019 £235,000 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY To digitize and make permanently available online two collections from the Sheridan Libraries Special Collections; the Women of the Book collection and the George Peabody Library's signature holdings.
31/12/2019 £2,000,000 INTERNET ARCHIVE To digitize and make available online 100,000 books that are cited in Wikipedia.
20/12/2019 £90,854 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Advancing open access
20/12/2019 £250,000 WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC Unrestricted funding to help support general management, staff, IT equipment and training, fundraising and governance.
18/12/2019 £100,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Berkeley will continue to build responsible access workflows for copyright and information policy. These novel workflows will support decision-making related to digitizing and providing access to unique collections in cultural heritage institutions. They will also bolster innovative work educating scholars about navigating copyright, contracts, privacy, and ethics in text & data mining research. This grant ensures that Berkeley can continue helping scholars to use, create, and publish scholarship in ways that promote dissemination, accessibility, and impact.
17/12/2019 £100,000 WENDE MUSEUM Towards the costs of running the museum.
16/12/2019 £780,485 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL To digitize manuscripts and books, including the Yahuda collection and Arab-Palestinian collection, and make them freely available online with metadata in Arabic and English.
09/12/2019 £4,845,548 £6,232,324 ILLUMINATED RIVER FOUNDATION The Illuminated River Foundation aims to create the longest public artwork in the world, lighting up to 15 bridges on the River Thames.
02/12/2019 £5,000,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES To establish a fund for the History Department for the salaries of new faculty hires to three established endowed chairs - the Henry J Bruman Endowed Chair in German HIstory, the Eugene Weber Chair in Modern European History and the Robert and Dorothy Wellman Chair in Medieval HIstory.
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Cumulative Grants
Amount Grantee
£50,575,000 EUROPEAN OPEN RIVERS PROGRAMME
£38,531,141 MASTERS IN CONSERVATION LEADERSHIP - UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
£24,990,000 BERLIN-BRANDENBURGISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN
£13,685,000 JOURNALISMFUND.EU
£11,075,680 BRITISH MUSEUM
£8,141,926 WENDE MUSEUM
£6,258,309 KYOTO UNIVERSITY
£5,200,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
£5,000,000 PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG
£5,000,000 HILL MUSEUM AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
£5,000,000 CREATIVE COMMONS
£5,000,000 BARD COLLEGE
£4,845,548 ILLUMINATED RIVER FOUNDATION
£4,641,000 DEEP OCEAN STEWARDSHIP INITIATIVE (DOSI)
£4,500,000 OUR RESEARCH
£4,171,695 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY)
£3,800,000 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW
£3,630,000 INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS
£3,470,000 CODE FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
£3,039,316 FAUNA & FLORA INTERNATIONAL
£3,006,209 HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY
£3,000,000 TRAFFIC
£2,500,000 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND
£2,500,000 BLUE VENTURES CONSERVATION Environment: Conservation
£2,423,967 MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY
£2,370,000 NEW VENTURE FUND
£2,000,000 WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY
£2,000,000 INTERNET ARCHIVE
£1,900,000 PALESTINIAN MUSEUM
£1,887,980 GLOBAL WITNESS Environment: Advocacy
£1,800,000 SWEDISH NATIONAL ARCHIVES
£1,725,000 GLOBAL CANOPY Environment: Conservation
£1,500,000 OPEN SYLLABUS
£1,380,000 FOREST PEOPLES PROGRAMME
£1,200,000 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY
£1,190,000 THE WILDLIFE JUSTICE COMMISSION
£1,177,050 STICHTING OPEN FUTURE
£1,000,000 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE
£979,132 WIKIMEDIA DEUTSCHLAND
£900,000 THEGUARDIAN.ORG
£877,998 INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR CONSERVATION OF NATURE
£780,485 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL
£750,000 INTERNEWS
£500,000 WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC
£500,000 UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION
£495,354 MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE INSTITUTE
£452,200 GESELLSCHAFT FüR FREIHEITSRECHTE
£400,000 NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
£325,000 GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE
£276,000 BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
£235,000 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
£200,000 YALE UNIVERSITY
£200,000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
£200,000 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
£200,000 CHICKENSHED NYC
£100,000 MIT OPEN LEARNING
£79,730 HERITAGE AND BEYOND
£70,000 ZALMAN SHAZAR CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY
£50,000 ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS
£26,100 NETWORK FOR THE STUDY OF NAZISM AND THE HOLOCAUST
£26,000 OF THE WILD PRODUCTIONS LTD
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Our Data Sources

Charity Commission for England and Wales
Scottish Charity Regulator
Charity Commission for Northern Ireland
360 Giving
CharityBase

Giving is Great