Philanthropist’s £25mn endowment to fund foundation’s work in perpetuity
Howard Lake | 20 February 2026 | News
The Sheila Coates Foundation has received a significant endowment from the British entrepreneur and philanthropist Ben Delo. The £25 million gift is designed to fund its work on an ongoing basis, and ensure it can expand and enhance its support for autistic young people in England.
His philanthropy has been driven by the work of one person who helped him in his youth.
The foundation was established by Delo himself in 2020 to advance the education and mental health of autistic children and young people. Since then the charity has supported over 600 schools and colleges, providing over 25,000 young people “with opportunities to excel, achieve, flourish, and succeed”.
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In particular it funds initiatives which help autistic young people to thrive in mainstream secondary school or college.
Projects funded by the Sheila Coates Foundation include sensory spaces and gardens, specialist interventions, staff training, additional staffing capacity, and creative and therapeutic activities. Each one of these is intended to improved engagement and confidence both in and beyond the classroom.
The grant-making charity works to share its lessons and best practice among educators and others through a collaboration with the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research.
Ben Delo’s philanthropy acknowledges one person’s support
Delo is a British entrepreneur, mathematician and philanthropist. He is a major donor to a number of causes, including maths education, free enquiry and academic freedom, the Commonwealth, and neurodiversity.
His wealth was generated by co-founding BitMEX, the world’s “first crypto-currency derivatives trading platform”, which is known for its “bitcoin-dollar perpetual swap.”
His commitment to philanthropy, first by founding and then endowing a grant-making trust, flows from the one-to-one support he experienced as a child. He explains:
“I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, aged 11, and the support I received from Sheila Coates was genuinely transformative to my education and future outlook. This Foundation, established in her memory, has had an incredible impact since its inception and I am looking forward to watching it grow from strength to strength in the coming years.”
The late Sheila Coates was “an inspirational creator of a service in Oxfordshire for children with autism and related conditions”. She led a team of more than 90 staff working with 200 children in many schools.
He added:
“I have long believed that diversity in the way that people think – and how they interpret and share their perspectives – needs to be seen as an asset to be nurtured, not a disability to be managed”.
Stephen McShane, CEO of Sheila Coates Foundation, thanked Delo for the endowment gift, saying:
“We are honoured to have received this endowment from Ben Delo. It secures our future and will enable us to continue transforming the educational experiences and lives of autistic students across the country. We are continually inspired by the teachers and schools we work with, and by the forward-thinking approaches we support to improve students’ experiences in mainstream education. We look forward to expanding our work with this generous support. Thanks to this endowment we can create lasting change for autistic young people now, and into the future.”
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.