Grants awarded
You can search below for information about all grants we awarded. Our grants data is also available in csv format here.
We are committed to transparency, and believe that with better information, grant-makers can be more effective decision makers. In 2017 we started to work with 360Giving to publish information about Arcadia grants (last updated February 2026). Arcadia has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to Arcadia’s grant data, to the extent possible under law, by dedicating it to the public domain with the Creative Commons CC0 waiver. This means the data is freely accessible to anyone to use and share.
Digitizing historical Swedish newspapers
To digitize Swedish newspapers that are out of copyright (1645-1906) and make them freely available online.
$3,600,000
2018
4 years
Endowment for the Center for Jewish History
To support the Center’s fundraising to enable its work in digitizating and preserving archives.
$3,500,000
2018
3 years
Towards the Wikimedia Endowment
To contribute to an endowment fund to support the work of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.
$3,500,000
2018
1 year
Wildlife Defence Programme
To use legal tools and advocacy to enforce laws that protect European wildlife and habitats.
$2,992,500
2018
5 years
Documentation of maritime archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa
To document endangered maritime archaeological heritage in the Middle East and North Africa and to make the data freely available online.
$2,660,000
2018
5 years
Endangered Material Knowledge Programme
To support a grant programme for documenting endangered material culture (how things are made and how they are used), and to make materials freely available online.
Learn more$2,295,684
2018
4 years
Enhancing Unlocked University Press Books
To create high quality EPUB files of scanned university press books, to enhance the reader experience.
$2,000,000
2018
2 years
Conservation of East Asian-Australasian Flyway
Wetlands International
https://wetlands.org/news/arcadia-fund-helps-us-support-restoration-management-critical-habitats
To conserve and restore degraded habitats in the Yellow Sea region in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.
$1,740,000
2018
5 years
Core funding
To support Public.Resource.Org’s work to make legal statutes and technical and safety standards freely available online.
$1,500,000
2018
3 years
Arabic Collections Online
To help digitize 23,000 books from NYU Library’s Arabic collections and make them freely available online.
$1,340,000
2018
3 years
Liberating species descriptions from in-copyright journal articles
To support work to extract taxonomic data from scientific publications and make them findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), and to promote the resulting repository as the standard in the taxonomic community.
$1,298,000
2018
3 years
Conservation of Freshwater Biodiversity in Key River Ecosystems
International Rivers
https://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/734/protecting-freshwater-biodiversity-how-international-r
To support International Rivers’ work to influence how rivers are governed, protected in law and valued to help ensure our rivers continue to support diverse habitats and wildlife.
$1,250,000
2018
5 years
Documentation of endangered historic buildings with frescoes in Shanxi Province, China
University College London (Institute of Archaeology)
http://shanxi-project.org/shanxi-digital-documentation-project/
To survey and document endangered buildings with frescoes in Shanxi Province from 500-1900 CE, and to create a bilingual database of the records that is freely available online.
$1,047,438
2018
6 years
Core costs
To help the foundation and its work to build a greener and more democratic Europe.
$1,018,754
2018
1 year
Unlocking University Press Books
To digitize more than 15,000 volumes of published monographs from university libraries and make them available via Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending platform.
$1,003,300
2018
4 years
Towards the Pauline Yu Fellowship Fund in Chinese or Comparative Literature
To provide a lead gift for a fellowship scheme in Chinese or Comparative Literature.
$1,000,000
2018
1 year
To establish an eye health fund in Asia and Africa
To support existing and new eye health programmes in Asia and Africa.
$1,000,000
2018
1 year
To establish the Scott Waugh Fund for Medieval History, and endowment for the History Department.
To establish the Scott Waugh Fund for Medieval History to support work that the chair of the UCLA History Department determines to be beneficial to the field of medieval history at UCLA.
$1,000,000
2018
1 year
Digitization of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts in Saint Catherine Monastery, Sinai
To digitize the Arabic and Syriac manuscript codices in the library of St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, and make the results freely available online.
$980,051
2018
3 years
Nepal cultural heritage documentation project
To document monuments and heritage objects in the Kathmandu Valley and make the resulting material freely available online.
$945,748
2018
2 years