Let's Talk About Money: Harry & Meghan's Archewell Foundation

A new series, starting with the Sussexes' charitable arm, which has been funded by four anonymous donations that total $15 million

Royals and money is a combo that is constantly in the news. Today, Prince Harry was awarded £140,600 (CAD$238,000) in damages from the Mirror tabloid group. Justice Fancourt ruled that 15 of 33 articles presented in court “were the product of phone hacking or other unlawful information gathering.” That decision came a few days after the judge in another of Harry’s cases ordered the royal to pay some of another tabloid publisher’s legal costs, estimated to be at least 48,000 pounds (CAD$82,000). It came after that judge, Justice Nicklin, rejected Prince Harry’s latest legal arguments in his ongoing defamation case against the Mail on Sunday’s parent firm last week. That could go to trial in the spring.

Still unknown is how much all these cases — there are five — are costing the Duke of Sussex in terms of legal fees and other expenses. Given his feelings of antipathy against the tabloids, which repeatedly invaded his private life, sometimes using illegal means such as phone hacking, it’s not hard to think that he considers it a financial investment well spent.

This newsletter is about another sort of money. I’ve been on the royal finance beat for a while and enjoy delving into the financial data of royal-affiliated organizations for a while to see what’s coming in and what’s going out and what those numbers mean to the organizations. In my July 18, 2023 newsletter, I examined the intricacies of the Sovereign Grant, including how its funding is affected by a famous royal non-profit, the Royal Collection.

I’m calling this financial series, “Let’s Talk About Money.” To more methodically track the filings, I’ve created a calendar of when royal-affiliated organizations usually release their financial data. For instance, the Sovereign Grant report is usually released at the end of June, while the Royal Collection released its latest annual report in August.

Please let me know if there’s a particular royal-related organization that you think should go on my calendar — I’ve put a few in this poll:

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ARCHEWELL FOUNDATION

Today, it’s time to look at the newly released filing of the Archewell Foundation, the charitable arm of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell organization, which also has its for-profit audio and production arms. The overall name of the organization is Archewell Inc.

It’s been going since 2020, when the couple moved to the United States, so there are only three years of publicly-available data, and of those, only the last two contain detailed information. There’s a lot we don’t know, but we get an idea of how Harry and Meghan’s philanthropic efforts are developing though it may take time for trends to become clear.