Last September, Prince Harry made a week-long visit to the UK and it changed everything. The entire tone and tenor of the royal reporting on Harry changed in a matter of days. Harry met with his father for tea and suddenly royalists were begging him to come back. Royal commentators casually mentioned that Harry was always the most charismatic royal and that everyone misses him in the UK. Prince William had a whole-ass nervous breakdown about it. Additionally, Harry handed around charitable donations like his wife tosses around her flower sprinkles. $1.5 million to Children in Need, $200K to WHO, $150K to Save the Children and $150K to the Centre for Blast Injury Studies. The last three were donated via Archewell, while Harry said that the $1.5 million to Children in Need came from him personally. The donations also caused a great deal of sadness among the deranger crew – it turns out that Harry is far from broke, and he has more than enough money to give generously to worthy charities. Well, not so fast! The Mail’s Richard Eden has spent months researching Harry’s donations and he’s come up with a huge update!
When the Duke of Sussex returned to Britain for four days of public engagements last September, he seemed to be on a public relations offensive after a string of negative stories about him and his wife. He made a point of visiting Nottingham, where he had brought Meghan Markle in December 2017, just days after they had announced their engagement. Prince Harry visited Community Recording Studio in the St Ann’s area of Nottingham to meet social action groups and local charities.
The trip captured headlines when it was announced that Prince Harry had made what was described as a ‘personal donation’ of a staggering £1.1million to the BBC’s Children in Need charity. The money would, it was said, be used to support projects that tackle violence affecting young people.
Sources told the BBC that the donation was ‘from his own money rather than his Archewell organisation’. It would, Harry said, help ‘changemakers in the city continue their mission to create safe spaces… and offer hope and belonging to young people who need it most’. The size of the donation did, however, cause some surprise on both sides of the Atlantic.
…How on earth, some people wondered, could the Sussexes afford to hand over £1.1million of taxed income to just one cause, however worthy? I have now discovered the answer. The money didn’t come from Harry’s own pocket, but from another charity. It did not come from money that Harry had made from the couple’s corporate deals or royalties from his tawdry memoirs, Spare.
All £1.1million came from charitable funds originally from his mother, Princess Diana. The donation was made not by Harry but by the Glen Beg Foundation. This is a charity that was established in 1999, two years after Diana’s death. It was set up using funds from the Princess of Wales Charities Trust. This was established by Diana in 1981, the year she and Prince Charles were married at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was financed by generous donations from companies and organisations that she visited or represented. When she died, the money in the trust was split equally between Harry and his brother, Prince William. The boys’ charities were named after hills on the monarch’s private Balmoral estate in Scotland. William’s was called The Broad Cairn Foundation; Harry’s the Glen Beg Foundation.
Documents filed at the Charity Commission confirm that £1.1million was transferred from the Glen Beg Foundation to Children in Need on October 10 last year, a month after Harry announced the donation. It’s not clear how much, if any, money remains in the Glen Beg Foundation. When it was established, the trustees were Hugh van Cutsem, a long-term friend of Charles who died in 2013, and Harry’s late godfather, old Etonian farmer Gerald Ward. Charles’s solicitor Baroness (Fiona) Shackleton of Belgravia was the only trustee to sit on the boards of both Harry and William’s charities.
A spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex failed to respond to a request for comment.
This is so typical of Eden and/or all of the royal reporters: “Harry said the money came from him personally, then why did it come from a charitable trust he gained access to after his mother’s death??” Is the trust not for Harry to use however he sees fit? Is that donation not exactly what Diana would have done? And what about the $500K donated to WHO, Save the Children and the Blast Injuries center? Lies, damn lies, and statistics! We’ve gone from emotional-support polls to emotional-support fact-checking. “We swear Harry is broke, he’ll come crawling back eventually, that wasn’t even his money!”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
