Last September, Prince Harry announced that he was donating £1.1 million of his personal wealth to BBC Children in Need. The announcement was warmly received. It was described as coming “from his own money rather than his Archewell organisation,” which was framed as a meaningful distinction. Harry was praised. The donation was reported widely.
GB News reports today that the £1.1 million did not come from Harry’s personal wealth. Charity Commission filings show the money was transferred from the Glen Beg Foundation, a charitable entity that holds funds inherited from his late mother, Princess Diana. The foundation was created in 1999, two years after Diana’s death, using money from the Princess of Wales Charities Trust, which Diana herself established in 1981, the year she married Prince Charles. Every penny of the donation traced back to charitable assets built on Diana’s philanthropic work.
The distinction between “Harry’s money” and “Diana’s charitable inheritance” is not a small one. Harry has a significant income from his Netflix deal, his Spotify deal while it lasted, his memoir Spare, his speaking fees, and his Archewell Foundation’s corporate partnerships. None of that money went to Children in Need. What went to Children in Need was a foundation his mother left behind, administered by trustees including his late godfather and a close friend of King Charles.
Harry said the donation came from his own money. His own money is, in this specific instance, his mother’s money, held in a charity, that was never going to be spent on Harry personally. Donating it to another charity is a legitimate and arguably correct use of the funds. Describing it as a personal sacrifice, or allowing it to be described that way, is a different thing.
The current balance remaining in the Glen Beg Foundation after the transfer is not publicly known. The original donors to the Princess of Wales Charities Trust, who gave money in 1981 to support Diana’s work, presumably did not anticipate their contributions being announced as Harry’s personal generosity 44 years later. They presumably also did not anticipate quite a lot of what has happened since 1981.
When a duke announces his personal donation and it turns out to be his late mother’s charitable estate, whose generosity is actually being celebrated?
Sources
GB News: Prince Harry’s £1.1million donation to Children in Need ‘did not come from his personal wealth’
GB News: Prince Harry donates £1.1million of his personal wealth to Children in Need
