The Ty-Nant cat sanctuary near Port Talbot in South Wales is ‘a not-for-profit organisation that helps cats find loving homes’.
It also raised more money in 2020 than one of the most high-profile, A-list charities in the world.
So too did the Surrey And Hampshire Canal Society, the French Porcelain Society and the Hindley Amateur Rugby League Football Club — to name only a few with similar financial profiles that can be found in the Charity Commission’s records.
But that is not to say that these worthy — if somewhat niche — causes drew in millions of pounds of donations; they did not.
They recorded individual incomes of between just £37,900 and £44,450 for the year. But these figures are still more than the ‘less than’ $50,000 (£36,681) declared as income in 2020 by the Archewell Foundation.
That is the American-registered charity that was incorporated in April 2020 and launched by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in a blaze of publicity.
The Archewell Foundation is described on its own website as ‘an impact-driven non-profit created by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
‘Our core purpose is to uplift and unite communities — local and global, online and offline — one act of compassion at a time. We believe that compassion is the defining cultural force of the 21st century.’
Under the legal terms of Archewell’s incorporation it must be transparent and focus ‘on directing funds to existing charities and projects instead of starting its own’.
And who better to attract, stimulate, or even personally donate such funds than Harry and Meghan? One of Archewell’s own executive recruits has cited the couple’s ‘unparalleled global reach’.
Archewell was launched at a time of unprecedented need, as the then-new Covid-19 pandemic ripped across the globe. Charitable donations in the UK alone soared by £800 million in 2020 according to the Charities Aid Foundation. But the crisis also saw shortfalls in the sector.
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