Sigrid Rausing Trust

About the Trust

History
The Trust was set up in 1995 by Sigrid Rausing. It was originally called the Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust after her grandparents. It made its first grants in 1996 and, from the beginning, has taken a keen interest in work that promotes international human rights.

In 2003 the Trust was renamed the Sigrid Rausing Trust to identify its work more closely with the aims and ideals of Sigrid Rausing herself. So far it has given away more than £100 million in grants.

Over the years, the trustees have developed a number of principles that guide their grant making. They favour advocacy groups that use a rights based approach to try to bring about social change. They regard the start of a funding relationship as the beginning of
a commitment that may last for many years. They offer grants on an annual basis, as well as three-year grants, released in annual tranches. They aim to offer continuity and flexibility to grantees.

The Trustees

At present the trustees are Sigrid Rausing, Joshua Mailman, Susan Hitch and Andrew Puddephatt.

Sigrid Rausing
Sigrid Rausing is a publisher, anthropologist and philanthropist, who founded her charitable trust (the Sigrid Rausing Trust) in 1995. The Trust has five main areas of interest; Human Rights, Women's Rights and Advocacy, Minority Rights, Environmental Justice, and Social and Economic Rights.

Last year, she and her husband, film and theatre producer Eric Abraham, together with the publisher, Philip Gwyn Jones (formerly the head of Flamingo), founded Portobello Books, a publishing company. Portobello Books already has an impressive list of authors, and will focus on activist non-fiction, fiction, and fiction in translation.
In December of 2005 Sigrid Rausing also bought Granta magazine and publishing house from New York publisher, Rea Hederman.

In 1993-4 she spent a year living on a remote collective farm in Estonia doing fieldwork for a PhD in Social Anthropology at University College London, followed by a two-year honorary fellowship in the same department. Her book, entitled: History, Memory and Identity in Post Soviet Estonia: the end of a collective farm, was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press, and was preceded by a range of articles in a variety of academic journals.

In 2004 she was the joint winner of the International Service Human Rights Award, in the Global Human Rights Defender category. In 2005 she won a Beacon Special Award for philanthropy. This year Sigrid Rausing has been awarded the Women’s Funding Network, Changing Face of Philanthropy Award. She is on the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and of the publishing company Atlantic UK.

Joshua Mailman
Joshua Mailman is a trustee of the Mailman Foundation, in New York and an advisor to the Pema Fund, in San Francisco. He has played an instrumental role in the founding of numerous organisations focused on business and social responsibility, including Social Venture Network (1987), Business for Social Responsibility (1992) and Social Venture Network Europe (1993). He is also the founder of the Threshold Foundation (1981) and a co-founder of the Network for Social Change U.K. (1983). He currently serves on the boards of Afropop Worldwide, Business for Social Responsibility, Fund for Global Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Sierra Madre Alliance and Witness. He is also a co-founder of Grameen Telecom, the largest cellular operator in Bangladesh and the only phone company in the world one-third owned by a bank that represents the interests of the poor.

Susan Hitch
Susan Hitch manages Lord Sainsbury of Turville's pro bono projects. She is a trustee of the Institute for Philanthropy, a member of the Commission on Unclaimed Assets, and was Chair of the Balance Foundation. She is a former Fellow in English of Magdalen College, Oxford and presenter on BBC Radio Three's Nightwaves, specialising in culture and the arts. She also taught at the University of Gdansk for the British Council and has a strong interest in Central and Eastern Europe. She is a trustee of the Gate Theatre and of the Orlando Consort.

Andrew Puddephatt
Andrew Puddephatt has worked to promote human rights for twenty years. He was Executive Director of ARTICLE 19 from January 1999 to October 2004. Prior to that he held a number of other prominent human rights positions, including Director of Charter88 and General Secretary of Liberty. He has been an expert member of both the Council of Europe and the Commonwealth Expert working groups on freedom of information and freedom of expression. Additionally, he chairs a number of other organisations or their boards, including International Media Support, a Danish-based NGO which provides emergency support to journalists in conflict areas, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency’s Independent Transparency Review panel, the Audit Committee for the UK's Parliamentary Ombudsman, and CAADA, a leading domestic violence charity in the UK. In January 2003 Andrew was awarded an OBE for services to human rights.

Trust staff

Programme Officers
Joanna Ewart-James manages the Human Rights portfolio. Prior to joining the Trust she worked as a Research Associate at Goldsmiths College. Joanna also developed policy on human rights, asylum and race equality in the Home Office and then joined the Foreign Office, where she managed the Human Rights Project Fund. Joanna holds an MA in Human Rights from ICS, University of London.

Theodoros Chronopoulos manages the Social and Environmental Justice portfolio. Prior to joining the Trust he was the Canon Collins Trust’s General Manager and before that he worked as a Campaigner for ActionAid International UK. Theodoros holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics.

Sara Buchanan manages the Minority Rights Portfolio. Prior to joining the Trust she worked for ten years as a project manager for international NGOs, including the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and ARTICLE 19. Sara has worked on numerous pan-European projects, in particular supporting civil society campaigns on freedom of information, defamation and hate speech in South East Europe. She has also worked in Brussels promoting policies on refugee integration in the EU. Sara holds a BA in Modern History from Oxford University.

Kelly Ann Quinn manages the Women’s Rights Portfolio and development of the portfolio for the former Soviet Union. Prior to joining the Trust she was the Deputy Director for the Empowerment & Civic Engagement unit of Winrock International. She has experience implementing programs to increase opportunities for women and girls - urban and rural, students and professionals, and politicians and lay advocates – throughout Africa and the former Soviet Union. She also spent three years in the Russian Far East directing a project to prevent trafficking in women. Kelly holds a BA in International Studies from the American University and did graduate studies in Development Anthropology at George Washington University.

Major Grants Administrator & Finance Officer
Sheetal Patel previously worked at the emergency healthcare organisation MERLIN, where her job involved travelling to various conflict zones to train staff and evaluate Merlin's financial systems. Previous to that she worked at Imperial College, London. She holds a qualification from the Association of Accounting Technicians.

Office Manager
Diana Clarke previously worked for Derwent Information, the University of London and the Flying Music Company. During 2005 she travelled extensively through Mexico and Central America. Whilst living in Guatemala, she volunteered at Hospital Obras Sociales del Hermano Pedro and Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoámerica.

Contact details

The Sigrid Rausing Trust is a charity registered in the United Kingdom.The charity number is 1046769.
The Trust’s address is Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London, W8 7SY, UK . The e-mail is info@srtrust.org. The phone number is +44 207 908 9870, fax number is +44 207 908 9879