What Good Can the Royal Family Really Do?
For all the speculation around the motivation for Harry and Meghan’s incendiary decision to step back from royal duties last year—was it the hounding tabloids? A rift between brothers? A desire to conquer Holly-wood?—the couple themselves peddled a central theme in what became known as Megxit: their desire to change the world.
At Sussex Royal, the website the couple launched in January (shortly before it was determined that they could no longer use the word royal in their branding), the most prominent page, “Supporting Community,” featured photos of a beaming Meghan with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and of Harry high-fiving kids in Botswana. It also included a scattergun list of causes the couple aimed to support, from combating HIV to empowering women and girls.
The Sussexes “do not plan to start a ‘foundation,’” the page stated, “but rather intend to develop a new way to effect change.” The details were fuzzy, but the implication was clear: The young couple could accomplish far more outside the confines of traditional, fusty royal philanthropy.
The rest of Harry’s family hardly seems willing to concede the point. Their recent and very public shows of civic duty can be seen as a direct response to Harry and Meghan deeming them an unworthy organization. “You can be assured that my family and I stand ready to play our part,” the Queen said in a statement early on in the Covid-19 crisis, perhaps spying an opportunity for the firm to bounce back from its recent scandals and rifts.
In late April, William and Kate, who had beamed themselves into a school for the children of essential workers and a new emergency hospital, led the couple’s launch of Our Frontline, a union of mental health charities supporting key workers.
Even Sophie Wessex, normally one of the less visible royals, stepped up just as Harry stepped down; the former PR executive and wife of Prince Edward has been spotted in recent months at buzzy philanthropic gatherings, and she spent much of April volunteering for a charity that has been making packed lunches for NHS workers.
The obvious rolling up of royal sleeves made Harry and Meghan’s next move seem rather uneventful. In April we learned a little more about their much-hyped plans: The couple were going to…start a foundation. Or at least the charitable organization they registered in the U.S. looked a lot like one. It would be called Archewell (“Arche,” the couple explained, is the Greek word meaning “source of action”), and its focus would be broad, to say the least, covering “emotional counseling” and “coordinating social, personal care,” among other things.
Perhaps Harry and Meghan will soon dazzle the public with the specificity and efficacy of their plans, but for now the couple appear simply to be adding a dollop of Beverly Hills Goopishness to a tried-and-tested royal recipe. For at least two centuries the royal family has used a dizzying array of charitable pursuits—in tandem with a canny employment of PR—to add legitimacy to its reign.
Just as Peabody, Carnegie, and Rockefeller were defining modern, self-made philanthropy in 19th-century America and setting the standard for the future billionaire class, royals were redefining their own role in British society. If kings and queens were once born to rule, they are now born to give back. And it all started with a 19th--century image makeover.
A teenage Victoria became queen only five years after the 1832 Reform Act launched modern democracy in Britain. She had to find new purpose for a family with an ever loosening grip on power. Victoria and her German cousin and husband, Albert, were acutely aware of the vulnerability of monarchy.
The 1848 revolutions in Europe terrified Albert in particular. “They triggered his view that charity was a fundamental purpose of monarchy,” says Frank Prochaska, an American-born historian of modern Britain at Oxford University and the author of Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy.
Prochaska, who has a special interest in philanthropy, says that since then the royal family has progressively tightened its focus on charity in response to further threats to its reputation and relevance. Victoria and Albert boosted the family’s patronage of charities, but Prochaska says it was George V (Queen Elizabeth's grandfather) who raised the bar.
At the end of World War I, in 1918, the Bolshevik Revolution combined with the wider rise of socialism and the emergence of the Labour Party in Britain demanded a new strategy at Buckingham Palace. “The crown would…endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the proletariat,” Prochaska writes. “In practice, it meant royalty visiting slums in dusty motor cars and inviting Labour bumpkins to tea.”
This charitable doubling down also led to the establishment of the first full-time palace press secretary, who was tasked with publicizing the renewed purpose. The Prince of Wales at the time, Prince Edward, was dispatched to mining and industrial districts. In a letter to his mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, Edward wrote of a tour of poor parts of Glasgow: “I do feel I’ve been able to do just a little good propaganda up there.”
Today the media, which trails the royals as they cut hospice ribbons and walk through minefields, projects an image of relentless do-goodery. More than 3,000 mostly charitable organizations now have a royal as patron or president. Our entire view of the Windsors today passes through the prism of charity. But as a fracturing firm faces new scrutiny over its role and reach, questions are being asked about its philanthropic endeavors. What good does the family do—and how do we know?
These were among the questions that emerged in the wake of Megxit, as well as after the Prince Andrew–Jeffrey Epstein affair. Andrew, like his relatives, had a slew of philanthropic activities he could point to as character references, though by and large all of them, including the English National Ballet and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, cut ties with their royal patron upon his downfall. But what was the patronage of a royal—even one in impeccable standing—worth, anyway?
Last December the New York Post ran a splashy article suggesting that the American branches of several royal foundations “skimp on the cause.” It noted that in 2017 little more than 7 percent of the more than $600,000 in donations to the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award USA reached the challenged young people it supports. Most of the rest went to salaries. The charity, which is based in Chicago, defended the figures, which it put down to high administrative and startup costs (it had set up shop only the year before).
Caroline Fiennes read the Post story with interest. For years the British scientist turned charity expert (who was married to James Fiennes, the late cousin of the actors Ralph and Joseph) has been on a mission to look into -royal-inspired giving. As director of Giving Evidence, a London consultancy and campaign group, Fiennes was struck in particular by the lack of scrutiny royal patronages receive.
“Whatever you want to know, ask quickly in case I get my head chopped off,” Fiennes quips when I call her, before getting serious. “I had so many questions,” she says of her initial research in 2016. “What even is a patronage? What is the process by which the royals decide what charities to become patrons of? And are they supposed to increase revenue or, I don’t know, staff morale? We just don’t know.”
Fiennes devised a way to measure the power of royal patronages. By assigning classification codes to hundreds of charities and examining their financial reports, she hoped to compare organizations so that she can determine the effect of, for example, Kate Middleton’s new patronage of a particular hospice. “It’s basically a souped-up before-and-after analysis,” she explains.
She also hoped to explore the democratic failings inherent in the lack of transparency. The royal family is, she points out, funded by British taxpayers. So why are patronages not audited by the government? And even if it turns out that patronages are effective, “we have the situation where some charities are getting a publicly funded resource and most are not, so we should have a conversation about how that resource is allocated,” Fiennes says. Why, she wondered, should dying children in one hospice get the benefit of a royal patronage? Do the other hospices find it harder to raise funds as a result?
But Fiennes, who has a master’s degree in physics from Oxford, couldn’t secure funding for the work. She was demoralized. Then, in the days after Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC interview, and the announcement that he would stand back from his 230 patronages, a wealthy donor responded to her pleas on Twitter and offered to fund her research.
Fiennes, who prefers not to reveal the donor’s identity, got to work. An early challenge has been simply listing royal patronages. The royal family’s own online listings were often incomplete, outdated, or contradictory. The link to one Welsh charity for which Prince Harry is patron directed unsuspecting would-be donors from the official royal family website to a Chinese pornography and gambling site. “Crown Jewels” was the perhaps inevitable headline when the Sun learned of the gaffe.
Fiennes hopes to publish her initial findings later this year. Prince Andrew’s parting of ways with dozens of charities provides her with potentially valuable new data: Will their fundraising suffer without the duke’s imprimatur? And might such data compel charities and donors to reconsider their aspirations for royal affiliations—especially at a time when the family faces a number of public relations challenges?
But it’s precisely those challenges that will likely have the royal family doubling down on its philanthropic endeavors. Prochaska remembers the call he received in the midst of the public fallout from one of the biggest nightmares ever to befall the palace. In the time after Princess Diana’s death, in 1997, the queen and her heir were seen as cold and remote. A private secretary wanted Prochaska’s advice. The historian believes that period of reflection led to, among other things, the introduction, in 2002, of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, now a high honor for charities.
Post-Diana soul-searching was significant for the current Prince of Wales. After leaving the navy, Charles had launched several projects for young people in the 1970s. In 1999 they were brought together as the Prince’s Trust and expanded.
The trust is now a fixture of Britain’s third sector and a passion project for the prince. “He refers to it as ‘my charity,’” says one former executive at the trust, which employs more than 1,000 people. The executive says a standard gala dinner held for the trust might typically raise ￡10,000. “The ones Prince Charles attends make ￡1.5 million a night. His presence in a room can absolutely make people donate a lot of money.”
Those sums can balloon even further when royal foundations look across the Atlantic. In 1992, Charles launched the Prince of Wales Foundation in the U.S. Its lavish gala dinners in the early 2000s fascinated gossip columnists and helped Charles restore his image alongside his new wife-to-be, Camilla.
In 2001, Betsy Bloomingdale, Patty Hearst, and Steven Rockefeller were part of a four-day festival of royal hospitality and polo watching. At a dinner at the prince’s Highgrove residence underwritten by Burberry and Chopard, Charles sat between Joan Rivers, who was MC, and Queen Noor of Jordan. “I remember one woman confiding that her Galliano dress required a butt tuck, and others for whom surgery prevented them opening their mouths wide enough to eat the canapés,” recalls another former Prince’s Trust executive, who was a regular at events in that era.
The Prince of Wales Foundation, which is based in Washington, DC, donated about the same amount it raised in 2018 (more than $8 million), according to tax returns, spending around 10 percent of its funds on salaries and expenses. “That is very much an appropriate figure,” says Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Lenkowsky found little of concern when asked to review the finances of the three foundations, including the Prince of Wales Foundation, that were featured in the New York Post story.
In 2011, William followed his father’s example and launched the American Friends of the Royal Foundation, the U.S. arm of his and Kate’s charity, which then included Prince Harry. In 2014, 15 high-rolling couples reportedly paid $50,000 each to join William and Kate at an exclusive fundraising dinner in New York at the Gramercy Park home of the British advertising mogul Martin Sorrell.
The money rolled in. In 2017 the New York–based charity made a $100,000 donation to Home Base, a program for military veterans and their families. Michael Allard, chief executive of Home Base, which is based in Boston, says it’s hard to assess precisely the broader impact of the gift, but he reports that the charity did see a small rise in donations. “I don’t think it would flip the switch on a philanthropist making a major gift, but having the endorsement of the royal family does have a positive effect at a microgiving level,” he says.
There are countless other positive stories of genuine engagement by royals and gains for the charities they support. William and Harry have won plaudits for their work on mental health and the continuation of their mother’s charitable legacy. Yet the question of efficacy and transparency remains.
In 2012 the late politician Paul Flynn pointed out that, while a low-key charity visit in his constituency had raised ￡1,000, it had cost the taxpayers more than ￡30,000 in policing. “The public stood nil-deep on the pavement,” he added. “To avoid embarrassment a group of schoolchildren were bused in and given flags to provide a hollow ritual cheer.”
Fiennes insists she is not a republican campaigner. “I’m not banging a drum here,” she says. “If it turns out royal patrons are the best thing since sliced bread, then great.”
She may have to devise new metrics for Harry and Meghan. Their challenge will be to balance their charitable ambitions with a new imperative: making a living. The couple have made clear their radical plan to be financially independent. Notably, one of Harry’s first engagements after his divorce from the firm was a very much for-profit speech at a Miami investment summit sponsored by JPMorgan. It may be that the Sussexes can carve out roles as more effective royal fundraisers when they are freed of palace shackles. But when a prince becomes a brand, charity begins at home.
This story appears in the Summer 2020 issue of Town & Country.
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