Impact UK: Nurturing nature

Lauren Gupta (née Holmes) was teaching in an East London state school and watching David Attenborough documentaries when her father Bill’s business, Radius, really started to rocket. The extreme wealth she and her sister Becky were due to inherit made her feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed, so together with their dad, they set up the Helvellyn Foundation in 2020, an independent grant-making organisation with a vision to live in a world where nature is thriving and everyone cares for it.

Meanwhile, with their mother’s support, they are continuing to explore ways beyond traditional philanthropy. ‘Now I’m having a baby,’ says the heavily pregnant Lauren, swivelling in her nursing chair, ‘I think more about future generations and the world they’ll inherit. That motivates me to do even more.’

The Spark

The real push was when my grandfather died in 2018. My dad talked about doing something in his memory. During lockdown, we finally had the time and space to act, and that’s when we set up the foundation. We didn’t want to name it after ourselves. That’s why we chose Helvellyn Foundation, after a mountain in the Lake District where my grandparents lived. The wildlife angle came from our family love of the outdoors. When we were little, at my grandma’s home in the Lake District, we’d play the Nature Reserve Game in the garden and pretend we had giraffes wandering around. I sometimes think about that when I look at what we’re doing now, it feels like we’ve come full circle.

The Choice

There are three trustees: my dad, my sister, and me. My dad provides the funds and signs off on big decisions, but day to day, my sister and I handle everything: research, due diligence, relationships, communications, and distributing grants. From the beginning, we gave unrestricted funding. We fund organisations and their mission, not projects. We don’t do applications or reports, just conversations and review calls.

We wanted it to be a proper organisation. So, we built a brand, website, systems, and processes. That was influenced by my dad’s entrepreneurial but non-money-driven approach. My sister and I brought different skills: she studied biodiversity and worked in conservation, and she’s a graphic designer, so she built the brand and website. I’m process-driven, so I created systems for due diligence, emails, and grant tracking. While we were doing philanthropy through the foundation, we started to learn about other ways wealth could be used for good. So, we approached Mum and her advisors, and she empowered us with resources. That gave us the freedom to try different models. We made it clear: we wouldn’t always chase financial returns. Some money would be ethical investments, some high-risk angel investing, and some philanthropy.

Last year was the first year we started this work, and we got involved in all kinds of things. We’ve made philanthropic loans with the Wildlife Trusts, either at 0% or very low interest rates. We’ve done angel investing in early-stage businesses, and we’ve expanded our philanthropic giving in a much bigger way. We’ve started exploring all these different ways wealth can be used beyond traditional philanthropy, and it’s been really interesting.