J.K. Rowling’s charity adopted the name Lumos in 2010.
Rowling founded the organization in 2005 as the Children’s High Level Group, working with politician Emma Nicholson to improve the lives of children separated from their families. The group focused especially on children living in institutions and on changing systems that removed children from family and community life.
In 2010, the organization became Lumos. The new name refers to the light-producing spell “Lumos” in the Harry Potter books, while also expressing the charity’s aim of bringing children out of institutional care and into family-based settings. The rebranding is therefore connected to Rowling’s fiction but reflects a real-world child-welfare mission.
Lumos is sometimes incorrectly described as having been founded under its current name. It began as the Children’s High Level Group in 2005 and changed its name five years later.