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Ya’ll need to understand that a non-profit or NGO doesn’t mean things are run on a shoestring budget. Many pay incredibly well, have massive budgets, and are mostly used as tax write-off’s. Look at how much money from the Red Cross actually goes to recipients in need. This is nothing surprising.
Ok, I went to the tax form to see if I could figure out what the "other" expenses are. Towards the end I found this:
FORM 990, PART IX, LINE 11G, OTHER FEES:
OUTSIDE PROGRAM CONSULTANTS:
PROGRAM SERVICE EXPENSES 2,182,883.
MANAGEMENT AND GENERAL EXPENSES 6,842.
FUNDRAISING EXPENSES 0.
TOTAL EXPENSES 2,189,725.
TOTAL OTHER FEES ON FORM 990, PART IX, LINE 11G, COL A 2,189,725.
I.... still do not understand what the $2.1 million was spent on. What are "program service expenses" and why is it so expensive that it costs more than twice that your charitable foundation is actually giving away?
Form 990s are required to allocate their income and expenses into categories. For expenses, all must be categorized as either program service expenses (direct expenses related to the charitable activity), management & general expenses (ex: administrative salaries; business insurance; etc that type of overhead), or fundraising expenses (such as the cost to host a gala).
I did not go look at their form but from the way you have paraphrased it, it seems like the charitable program generated $2.1m in outside consultancy fees (heavy reliance on 1099 contractors as opposed to salaried employees I presume) whereas there were ~$7k in outside consultancy fees to support general and administrative tasks. Something like hiring an HR consultant for instance. I don’t actually know what this charity does or I would take a stab at what sort of consulting/contract labor they might require as a charitable expense. These type of thing expenses are typically things that are in direct relation to the charitable revenue.
Source: US Tax accountant
Thanks for more information about how all this works! I don't know much about finances in this area and it just seems really odd to me that what Archewell spent on those outside consultancy fees (for a foundation that doesn't have any programs of its own) is more than twice the money they handed out in grants. Weird!!
Definitely odd. Some may be financial consultants to help direct who receives the grants. Could be groundwork in hopes to set up their own programs in the future or something like that. It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve seen but charities get murky quickly especially the celebrity kind.
Because based on what I'm seeing on the Royal Foundation's annual report, they spent ₤9.9 million on charitable activities and that was 86% of the foundation's expenditures for 2024.
You do realize that Archewell Foundation gave to charity more than William & Kate's Foundation in 2024?? Or is this hate only saved for Harry & Meghan??
Down voting doesn't prove anything... except that you are not intellectually curious and full of hate. Someone posted a full Royal disclosure and I checked it out in case I was wrong.
I guess they mean the grants part, the RF gave 1.2 mil as grants to other charities, However, grants are a minor part of the foundation, they have their own independent programs, United for Wildlife, Homewards and the Early Childhood Center, which totaled 8.7 mil, most of the work of these are done by the Royal foundation not through grants to other charities
There seem to be 2 talking points here:
- H&M gave more that W&K (they didn't)
- It's their own money they can spend it however they want ( it isn't)
It’s always been my belief that the Archewell Foundation is a low priority afterthought to Meghan and Harry. Their involvement in philanthropy/charity work is simply good optics and nothing more.
I think that Harry was raised to think he should spend his life doing philanthropy, but he doesn't actually have the funds to do it anymore and he hasn't come to the realization that he is a royal in title only now, living in a country where people truly don't give a crap about that title. I think their net worth is $60 million but that is like practically broke in rich people terms. The philanthropy is for show, to keep up the appearance of being a royal, being wealthy. They are involved in all of these failed bullshit lifestyle ventures in a country and time that doesn't resonate with people in the US.
They should just get real jobs instead of doing these surface things to keep up with appearances.
Yes, I agree with your assessment. Of the two, I think Harry actually does have some desire to engage in philanthropic work. Largely because it’s all he’s ever really known. I find Meghan’s philanthropic desires to be 100% performative. I believe her true ambitions are wealth and fame. That said, she very much wants to curate an image of being a philanthropist because she doesn’t want to be viewed as shallow, one dimensional, fame/wealth hungry, etc…
Salaries are listed separately at just under $1m. What would $2.9m “other expenses” typically consist of? It constitutes 55% of total expenditure so it’s not just a sweeping up item. Would these “other expenses” typically be listed somewhere? If not then how would you know if they were genuine expenses that would fall to be covered by the charity or not?
Sometimes there are people who run nonprofits but don’t have the funding to go for the full IRS nonprofit route, due to many factors, so having an intermediary org that can act as fiscal sponsor is a hugely helpful thing when they can take on the administrative burden of grants and reporting, as well as accounting and legal. I haven’t dug in enough to see if that’s the case here but I’ve worked with grants and nonprofits on the legal side and volunteer with several nonprofits and structuring and partnership agreements are a huge part of my day job too. It’s a very difficult thing to manage nonprofits and fiscal sponsorships have been huge for many smaller niche groups. Just some perspective on why it might appear shady if you’re unfamiliar with the industry. I’d love the IRS to make it easier and for many grants to revamp their rules but until they do, this is where we are.
That reminds me a bit like something that happens in the oil industry. Foreign companies will not establish a legal presence in for example Angola because it’s too much trouble. Instead they “partner” with local companies which then hire the foreign company as “consultant”.
The local agency keeps a pre-established percentage. 10-15%.
What you are saying sounds like what the intermediary org would be doing. Just an “agent”, not a full fledged second charity
I see what you are saying, but that is not what is going on here. Archewell is not a fiscal sponsor, and less than 25% of their last publicly reported budget numbers were distributed as grants and contributions to other organizations. I don't think they are doing anything shady, but it's pretty silly for anyone to pretend this organization is anything but a vanity project at this point.
As for making it easier to get c3 status - for orgs that are less than $50k per year in receipts, it's literally a five minute form for exempt status and just a few hundred dollars in filing fees. Most forms are auto approved unless they have flagged language.
Sure, it's easy to become a 501c3 but it's the maintaining that the small groups have issues with. I spent a lot of time having to deal with people who lost their status or had other filing issues because the expedited process was almost too easy and allowed people to start an organization they didn't have the skills to manage.
Thank you for this. I'm not saying Archewell is shady; rather, why not donate directly. But this makes a lot of sense as I know more than a few smaller, local charities that do struggle to raise funds because of admin, pr, and other limitations.
That little charitable output is pretty shameful for people who want to be known as global philanthropists. If you’re going to grovel to right-wing billionaires, at least have something to show for it, damn…
It’s crazy to me how people honestly think their charity is a scam and they’re “grifting” when they actually get way more scrutiny than most charities. The Daily Fail has a weird, unnatural obsession with them and is clearly combing through all their numbers and reports just waiting for some scandal to report. Of course they can’t find anything so they try to frame rising expenses or less revenue as “failure.” The true measure of a charity should be how many people in need are positively impacted.
It's a tabloid. They aren't "obsessed" with anything or anyone, they simply make very calculated decisions who and what will work as the best clickbait, hence make them the most money.
I don’t think it’s a grift but I do think they probably need to either
a) create a new strategy of how they operate
B) close it and take their own advice. Service is universal. Meghan and Harry don’t need a foundation. They can do so much good with just simply donating to the charities.
And also hate the DF or or hate the DF, the reporting is based on actual financial reports and sometime halfway thru the year don’t one should have gone… we need to rethink what we ar doing coz it’s not working.
The DF can’t be taken seriously. They take facts/numbers but then spin what, for anyone else would be considered normal or a non-issue, into something totally misleading and negative. They’ve been sued (successfully) by Harry and Meghan so why should we consider any of their reporting fact-based?
They really, really need to stop being the ones who manage the charity and their pr. They are not good at it and it only hurts them. They have to step back a bit. They can do more good that way and will get far less negative headlines. I get they want to be in control but clearly its not working
I'm VERY curious about the kinds of things Archewell is paying for. It seems like Archewell is paying for travel, security and accommodation for Harry and Meghan whenever they travel for anything they can consider related to Archewell. That HAS to be adding up pretty quickly and like... is it worth it? Is paying for the Sussexes security in NYC to attend a gala really beneficial to the foundation or to any of the causes the foundation is supposed to be supporting?
Makes the entire thing seem like a vanity project where Meghan and Harry can use Archewell as a piggy bank to pay for the philanthropy cosplaying.
Good news, in the United States, all charities have to file what's called a form 990 with the IRS. These are public, and publicly searchable through various databases, and will inform you of all of this information that you're curious about.
Megan and Harry are paid $0 by the foundation. There are no expenses paid reported relating to their security, or accommodation. There is an extensive list of the grants given that adds up exactly to the amount of money expended by the foundation that year, which range from things like women's health to youth development to community journalism to veterans services.
These forms break down in detail what the foundation spent on office supplies like paper clips, so it would be quite difficult to hide a bunch of security, hotel rooms, and travel within the forms.
There's a photo from the 990 form in the article, the numbers people are discussing come from it
The total grants are 1.25 million, the total expenditure is 5.1 mil, including 2.9 mil on "Other" expenses, H&M don't receive a salary but there's no way to confirm that some of the 3 mil went towards their trips' travel or security and passed off as charity expenses
Like over half of their expenditures just being “other” is…. Idk. Feels weird. Like imo “other” should be bits and bobs that don’t fit neatly into normal expenditure of a charity not the majority of a charity’s expenditure.
(in fact, as a lawyer I've spent some time tracking down 990 fraud, and this is one of the most boring and straightforward filings I've ever seen. I've seen everything from Medicare fraud to double reporting of medical expenses to claiming for-profit education as charitable to imaginary charities with fake forms to right-wing money laundering "charities" that look like real charities, but when you start drilling down into their recipients, you discover it's just a network for a couple of rich Republican dudes to give money to slightly less rich Republican dudes who don't actually do anything.
This one is a straightforward and dull as Girl scouts USA. They have the money, they give the money, the money is given to real organizations that really exist, have addresses, help people, and are easy to Google.
There are also multiple independent journalism outlets that are devoted to nothing but tracking down charity fraud, including propublica but also including the ones like charity navigator that tell you what your donation is doing if you give to a particular charity. If Archewell were fucking around, we all already would have found out.
And while I haven't given this a 6-hour comb through like I would do if tracking down actual fraud, but a cursory inspection shows nothing that jumps out; this is an incredibly boring and normal charity. The salaries for the officers leading the charity are, as always, higher than you'd expect. But that is absolutely typical of charities in the United States (partly because your top job or top two jobs spend a lot of time on legal and accounting and technical compliance work, which is the sort of thing that requires an advanced degree in the US) and Archewell only has three staff, so it's not like some well-known "fight X disease" charities I could mention that pay their CEO $1.5 million and have staffs running into the hundreds, and most of their fundraising goes to paying their staff, not to funding any medical research.)
990s have a lot of attached forms, so it'll be like 990 part A, 990 part B, etc. The "plain" 990 Is Justin overall summary of the financials for the year, and then the attached sub forms will give you greater drill down. I'm not well versed enough in this type of charity to tell you exactly what drill downs you get, but there were seven or eight forms attached that would expand on those collective numbers, so presumably you can find out rather a lot.
I'm more about hospital fraud and politicians laundering money through fake charities, so I know a lot more about what kind of subforms to expect there.
(Also some places that index 990s and make them easy to find just put up the vanilla 990 and don't include the sub parts. But they're public documents, you can go to the IRS and find the complete filing. Just remember they will typically be six months to one year delayed, because 2025 isn't even over so you can't even begin preparing the filing for it. And in some cases you're dependent on getting forms from other parties who have a 30 or 90 day period in which they can provide you those forms. So you will necessarily always be reading last year's information at best. But! Once you found the charity you want, you can sit there and read all of their filings going back as far as they have existed, or as far as the IRS has been posting them online if it's a really old charity. That can sometimes help you find a narrative through line of fraud, or more likely a narrative through line of a bad executive who doesn't know what he's doing, or a shift in charity priorities from children's education to women's health or something like that. You can definitely find stories there by dinging through the history of the forms, they just might be kind of interesting and not nefarious. Or they might be very nefarious, you never know.)
So 140k for a communications professional in California is pretty par for the course -- my sister is a mid-career communications professional in California and she makes well over $300k a year (and she don't work for celebrities, she works for an institution, communications professionals are just expensive in California). The two more senior positions I don't know, because I didn't look them up where their jobs up specifically, but I'm guessing it's that between the two of them they have some combination of JD, accounting degree, CPA certification, or various other professional degrees or certifications that make them able to not only manage a charity, but manage all of the legal and financial reporting required, which can be very technical, and can be extremely expensive to hire out to an accounting firm.
Moreover, the CEO usually is the one who goes to jail if the 990 is wrong, because you attesting that the form you are filing is correct under penalty of perjury. This is why accountants and attorneys who prepare SOX filings and annual statements (for for-profit corporations) get paid a lot of money, because they're the ones who get to go to jail if there's an error in the document.
On top of that I would assume just California cost of living bonus.
In my experience, three employees plus the two founders as the board of the charity is pretty slim and efficient, but there are certainly exceptions so don't take that as gospel or as a sign of virtue. But on first glance, I gave my usual eye roll that CEOs of charities make so goddamn much money, but then moved on and noted the small overall staff and thought that seemed pretty normal.
Nope, just a lawyer with a lot of experience with charities and charity fraud, who looks at 990s a lot.
In fact, my claim to fame is I brought down a US congressional campaign, when I was on maternity leave, because the guy just seemed really yelly and defensive about his charities and so I got curious and started digging into the 990s and discovered a whole ton of fraud which I referred to appropriate local prosecutors.
But people who don't deal with charities in the United States are often unaware of form 990, or of how very detailed form 990 is. It's difficult to hide charity fraud in a form 990. People who get away with it usually get away with it because not that many people bother to read form 990 until the scandal is already underway. Because they're particularly long and boring tax documents.
(I've only seen a couple of cases where charity fraud was not obvious from the form 990, and those were billion dollar non-profit hospitals that were doing a bunch of sleight of hand with Medicare, Medicaid, charitable work, and federal funding for meds, student education. You had to know a shit ton about which federal laws enabled each of those funding sources, what they could be used for, and what they could not be used for. They almost all involved double counting med student education costs as Medicare costs. And because of the size and complexity of these non-profit hospitals, the filings can run to 250 pages and you have to track down something from page 108 that's hinky way back on page 211. I would sort of expect private colleges to have the same level of hinkiness (same issues of multiple sources of federal funding, multiple charitable endeavors underway, and a lot of highly paid senior staff who are required by law to be highly educated), but that is not my area of expertise in tracking down form 990 fraud.)
🤣🤣really yelly. And the added bonus of on your maternity leave. Good for him!
I really appreciate you taking the time to break this down. Learned a lot and it was insightful on the MH front. Their names always garner such salacious headlines; this specific headline could have easily (and it seems it has) produced the worst assumptions in this subreddit alone.
There are eight attached schedules to the main 990 (I think in this case -- there can be more or less, depending), and those will break down a lot of those collect-all categories. But I'm in bed with a pre-Christmas flu so I'm not going to do it
I’ve actually just scanned all of the schedules and they are box ticked. No breakdown of expenses at all. I find your walls of text on this matter and claims that you are a lawyer who has uncovered fraud very odd
"I'm not familiar with US charity reporting, but because what you're saying doesn't fit into my worldview, also I looked at that form I'm not familiar with and now I know everything and I can say definitively that you don't know what you're talking about and also you're not a lawyer". Odd behavior say the least.
Well they are mostly paying for it themselves in the end seeing as how most of the money received by the foundation to begin with is their money that they donated.
That’s not true. Of the $13 million they initially raised, $10 million of it came from a single donation from a Silicon Valley nonprofit. The other $3 million came from another anonymous donor.
The person I was replying to was saying it’s not a big deal if they spend charity money on things that should be personal expenses because they’re funding the charity. My point was there’s significant tax advantages to doing so and that’s why doing such a thing would be fraud.
Note: there’s no evidence they’re doing this. More likely then not they’re just running the charity very poorly
Or you could actually read the filing and realize you’re just repeating inaccurate statements. It’s weird to make up reasons to hate people. Just own up that you don’t like them. It’s weird but fine. Lying about this just makes you look bad.
No they didn't, from the Royal Foundation report 9.9 mil on charitable activities which is 86% of money spent, only 1.6 mil (14%) spent on raising funds
The W&K foundation as you call it gave $11million in 2024. They raised $12million. Please stick to facts and don’t bring the other couple in to something that has nothing to do with them.
They technically did not give 11M, the report includes all funds spent including on delivering projects, so that includes the cost of planning, staff and the projects themselves.
But the breakdown is more transparent as you can see the breakdown of funds between the different projects. However W&K have projects that run in house so they’re responsible for developing, planning, executing the projects.
Is the issue that they are taking on projects that are too big for what they can handle at scale or are they just not working with other charities and donors to get things covered?
No that’s never been confirmed anywhere. It’s funnelled through other funds and they’ve never claimed it was them who donated.
Their biggest amount came from some Silicon Valley fund and then the next chunk from fidelity, the donor is anonymous
ETA: tons of foundations are not built on personal wealth, most rely on donors including big ones like the Gates foundation, the Clintons, Obamas etc. W&Ks is through fundraising as well
I have major qualms with celebrities that start their own charities in America to pay their salary out of, which is a tax shield for the rich (this is not just harry and Megan, though they are doing the same so I include them).
If you are spending more than 3x's what you are giving on overhead what is the point? Why not give those contributions directly to an already existing non profit (which is really all archwell does from my research) from yourself. You can work to solicit from rich people to donate directly to causes you care about, and throw fundraisers for other non profits directly. So why have a 3rd party charity in the first place? It reduces the amount given to the causes.
Sorry for the rant but I volunteered for decades in the non profit space for many different women's shelter when I was in the military and it is so hard to get funding, volunteers are difficult to find, vet and bring on as opposed to staff, and their wages are laughably low. We need real change and help in this country, and it's bogged down by 501c's that are just using it for legal tax evasion.
But that’s not what is happening here. You can verify they aren’t being paid out of the charitable fund on their 990. It’s easy to confirm so why make things up?
While they aren’t being paid a salary if the charity is paying for travel and clothing and other stuff that they value then their still benefiting from it
Running a successful charity is a lot of work even for well run organizations. Donations are needed constantly. Just look at Jane Goodall's constant fundraising. She was on a fund raising tour when she passed away.
This is what Warren Buffet did, and that was hus reasoning: others were already set up and doing the work capabably. Buffett has given billions to the Gates foundation alone.
100%. You are exactly right, and only people that understand the sector get that what they are doing is literally just effective accounting and tax shields for some vanity projects vs doing something actually impactful
This. They don’t have a charitable foundation in the sense that most people think of as providing charity. They have a foundation as a way of writing off huge expenses they incur. The vast bulk of family based foundations/charity/trusts are doing this, so I’m not throwing shade towards them. But it’s a tax vehicle far more than it an organization doing consistent and meaningful work.
The thing about that which confuses me is what "program service expenses" could cost so much that it totals to more than double the amount that this charitable foundation gave away to charitable organizations?
Giving out $1.25 million in grants is a good thing for a small charity, but the expenses are insane. I'm sure that comes from the overseas trips to places like Colombia and Nigeria. Travel, security, hotels, and food costs add up when you're paying for yourselves and staff.
I think the problem is that they have really amazing/big ideas, but don't execute them well. They seem to jump into things very quickly without hammering out the fine details.
Wasn’t the Nigeria trip supposedly at the invitation of the Nigerian military for Invictus-related purposes? It seems highly inappropriate if Archewell (which is completely separate from Invictus) was paying the expenses for that trip.
Yikes it’s not it pretty well known that when charities operating expenses are the majority of their expenses that they are generally just scams and you should stay away from donating?
But good on them for finding a tax free way to pay for a lot of their travel, clothing, glam expenses
5.1 million in expenses and only 1.25 million in grants!! I know non profits have huge administrative costs but to exceed donations or grants given out might show that it is struggling. Might be the reason for rebranding which came out before this annual report. Also 3 employees let go right before Christmas.
I have a feeling that whenever Harry and Meghan are with richer friends, richer friends pick up the tab. So I guess Nacho picked all the bills including providing horses and stuff for Harry in Aspen. His great uncle David and Wallis lived off lavishly in generosity of their richer friends.
I don’t think Nacho is rich. There’s probably even richer people on that polo team for whom letting Harry on the jet or bringing his horse with them is not a big deal
Yes, the figures are true. Seems like Nigeria, Colombia trip might have been in some point funded by themselves. We know celebritiy charities are in very murky area of tax invasion stuff and Archwell is registered in Delaware.
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Ya’ll need to understand that a non-profit or NGO doesn’t mean things are run on a shoestring budget. Many pay incredibly well, have massive budgets, and are mostly used as tax write-off’s. Look at how much money from the Red Cross actually goes to recipients in need. This is nothing surprising.
They didn’t pay for their own travel or at least reimburse the charity?
Unfortunately, enthusiasm does not automatically equal financial success.
Buffoons shall buffoon
Ohmygod, using this, thank you 😆
Ok, I went to the tax form to see if I could figure out what the "other" expenses are. Towards the end I found this:
I.... still do not understand what the $2.1 million was spent on. What are "program service expenses" and why is it so expensive that it costs more than twice that your charitable foundation is actually giving away?
Form 990s are required to allocate their income and expenses into categories. For expenses, all must be categorized as either program service expenses (direct expenses related to the charitable activity), management & general expenses (ex: administrative salaries; business insurance; etc that type of overhead), or fundraising expenses (such as the cost to host a gala). I did not go look at their form but from the way you have paraphrased it, it seems like the charitable program generated $2.1m in outside consultancy fees (heavy reliance on 1099 contractors as opposed to salaried employees I presume) whereas there were ~$7k in outside consultancy fees to support general and administrative tasks. Something like hiring an HR consultant for instance. I don’t actually know what this charity does or I would take a stab at what sort of consulting/contract labor they might require as a charitable expense. These type of thing expenses are typically things that are in direct relation to the charitable revenue. Source: US Tax accountant
Thanks for more information about how all this works! I don't know much about finances in this area and it just seems really odd to me that what Archewell spent on those outside consultancy fees (for a foundation that doesn't have any programs of its own) is more than twice the money they handed out in grants. Weird!!
Definitely odd. Some may be financial consultants to help direct who receives the grants. Could be groundwork in hopes to set up their own programs in the future or something like that. It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve seen but charities get murky quickly especially the celebrity kind.
Maybe on tons of moisturizers since they are apparently the most moisturized couple in the world (according to their fans)
This reminds me of a guy that did a carpentry job at my dad’s house (I paid for it coz my dad was abroad) and his original pró forma was like
1000 eur- material wood
100 eur- wood varnish
800- labor
100 eur- brush/sandpaper
2000- other
I called him up and asked what other do you need? Coz you pretty much listen everything you use
And still gave out more than the royal foundation but selective interest I guess.
Why lie when facts are so easy to google? The financial details are on pages 11-13.
Annual Report of the Royal Foundation
Source?
How do you figure that?
Can you provide evidence of this claim?
Because based on what I'm seeing on the Royal Foundation's annual report, they spent ₤9.9 million on charitable activities and that was 86% of the foundation's expenditures for 2024.
You do realize that Archewell Foundation gave to charity more than William & Kate's Foundation in 2024?? Or is this hate only saved for Harry & Meghan??
Down voting doesn't prove anything... except that you are not intellectually curious and full of hate. Someone posted a full Royal disclosure and I checked it out in case I was wrong.
Tried to attach the subreddit to the full comparison breakdown that someone else did... with the supporting documents/links, but post was deleted.
All info is under the Harry & Meghan Netflix subreddit.
Uhm… not sure that a subreddit which is extremely biased would be a good source.
I'm surprised H &M's fans are here posting statistics. I thought they were busy discussing the marital life of two strangers for the billionth time.
https://royalfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/TheRoyalFoundation_Annual-Report_FinStatement_2024.pdf
Where are you getting that from? Per the financial report from 2024, they spent ₤9.9 million of ₤11.4 million in expenditures on charitable endeavors.
I guess they mean the grants part, the RF gave 1.2 mil as grants to other charities, However, grants are a minor part of the foundation, they have their own independent programs, United for Wildlife, Homewards and the Early Childhood Center, which totaled 8.7 mil, most of the work of these are done by the Royal foundation not through grants to other charities
There seem to be 2 talking points here:
- H&M gave more that W&K (they didn't)
- It's their own money they can spend it however they want ( it isn't)
It’s always been my belief that the Archewell Foundation is a low priority afterthought to Meghan and Harry. Their involvement in philanthropy/charity work is simply good optics and nothing more.
I think that Harry was raised to think he should spend his life doing philanthropy, but he doesn't actually have the funds to do it anymore and he hasn't come to the realization that he is a royal in title only now, living in a country where people truly don't give a crap about that title. I think their net worth is $60 million but that is like practically broke in rich people terms. The philanthropy is for show, to keep up the appearance of being a royal, being wealthy. They are involved in all of these failed bullshit lifestyle ventures in a country and time that doesn't resonate with people in the US.
They should just get real jobs instead of doing these surface things to keep up with appearances.
i agree with your comment --- but $60M is not broke in rich people terms!
Yes, I agree with your assessment. Of the two, I think Harry actually does have some desire to engage in philanthropic work. Largely because it’s all he’s ever really known. I find Meghan’s philanthropic desires to be 100% performative. I believe her true ambitions are wealth and fame. That said, she very much wants to curate an image of being a philanthropist because she doesn’t want to be viewed as shallow, one dimensional, fame/wealth hungry, etc…
Meghan did philanthropic work even prior to her time in the royal family, I don’t think it’s fair to say she’s all about just fame and wealth.
No - it’s their tax write off.
All of the above. With some communal narcissism mixed in.
Quelle surprise
Honestly if I were them I’d just dissolve/close it and donate directly to the charities.
Instead of this, They can host charity galas with their rich friends for these organizations as fundraisers.
Salaries are listed separately at just under $1m. What would $2.9m “other expenses” typically consist of? It constitutes 55% of total expenditure so it’s not just a sweeping up item. Would these “other expenses” typically be listed somewhere? If not then how would you know if they were genuine expenses that would fall to be covered by the charity or not?
I don't understand giving money to an organization who then pays it out to someone else when you can just donate directly to a charity.
Sometimes there are people who run nonprofits but don’t have the funding to go for the full IRS nonprofit route, due to many factors, so having an intermediary org that can act as fiscal sponsor is a hugely helpful thing when they can take on the administrative burden of grants and reporting, as well as accounting and legal. I haven’t dug in enough to see if that’s the case here but I’ve worked with grants and nonprofits on the legal side and volunteer with several nonprofits and structuring and partnership agreements are a huge part of my day job too. It’s a very difficult thing to manage nonprofits and fiscal sponsorships have been huge for many smaller niche groups. Just some perspective on why it might appear shady if you’re unfamiliar with the industry. I’d love the IRS to make it easier and for many grants to revamp their rules but until they do, this is where we are.
That reminds me a bit like something that happens in the oil industry. Foreign companies will not establish a legal presence in for example Angola because it’s too much trouble. Instead they “partner” with local companies which then hire the foreign company as “consultant”.
The local agency keeps a pre-established percentage. 10-15%. What you are saying sounds like what the intermediary org would be doing. Just an “agent”, not a full fledged second charity
I see what you are saying, but that is not what is going on here. Archewell is not a fiscal sponsor, and less than 25% of their last publicly reported budget numbers were distributed as grants and contributions to other organizations. I don't think they are doing anything shady, but it's pretty silly for anyone to pretend this organization is anything but a vanity project at this point.
As for making it easier to get c3 status - for orgs that are less than $50k per year in receipts, it's literally a five minute form for exempt status and just a few hundred dollars in filing fees. Most forms are auto approved unless they have flagged language.
Sure, it's easy to become a 501c3 but it's the maintaining that the small groups have issues with. I spent a lot of time having to deal with people who lost their status or had other filing issues because the expedited process was almost too easy and allowed people to start an organization they didn't have the skills to manage.
Yeah it's pretty shocking how many orgs forget to file 990s for years in a row!
Thank you for this. I'm not saying Archewell is shady; rather, why not donate directly. But this makes a lot of sense as I know more than a few smaller, local charities that do struggle to raise funds because of admin, pr, and other limitations.
precisely.
what is the point of a donation going through two sets of admin expenses?
trying to be all things to all people is a course set on failure
This is such a good point
That little charitable output is pretty shameful for people who want to be known as global philanthropists. If you’re going to grovel to right-wing billionaires, at least have something to show for it, damn…
It’s crazy to me how people honestly think their charity is a scam and they’re “grifting” when they actually get way more scrutiny than most charities. The Daily Fail has a weird, unnatural obsession with them and is clearly combing through all their numbers and reports just waiting for some scandal to report. Of course they can’t find anything so they try to frame rising expenses or less revenue as “failure.” The true measure of a charity should be how many people in need are positively impacted.
It's a tabloid. They aren't "obsessed" with anything or anyone, they simply make very calculated decisions who and what will work as the best clickbait, hence make them the most money.
I don’t think it’s a grift but I do think they probably need to either
a) create a new strategy of how they operate
B) close it and take their own advice. Service is universal. Meghan and Harry don’t need a foundation. They can do so much good with just simply donating to the charities.
And also hate the DF or or hate the DF, the reporting is based on actual financial reports and sometime halfway thru the year don’t one should have gone… we need to rethink what we ar doing coz it’s not working.
The DF can’t be taken seriously. They take facts/numbers but then spin what, for anyone else would be considered normal or a non-issue, into something totally misleading and negative. They’ve been sued (successfully) by Harry and Meghan so why should we consider any of their reporting fact-based?
It feels like a lot of what they do turns out poorly.
They really, really need to stop being the ones who manage the charity and their pr. They are not good at it and it only hurts them. They have to step back a bit. They can do more good that way and will get far less negative headlines. I get they want to be in control but clearly its not working
They constantly lose employees at an alarming rate, so who is going to do their PR consistently?
From what i understand its cause they keep interfering and not doing what they are advising them to do. Makes sense they pr people would walk away.
Yeah, I wager that's it. They are annoying bosses who don't listen.
Daily Hate hahahha
Why did expenses soar?
I'm VERY curious about the kinds of things Archewell is paying for. It seems like Archewell is paying for travel, security and accommodation for Harry and Meghan whenever they travel for anything they can consider related to Archewell. That HAS to be adding up pretty quickly and like... is it worth it? Is paying for the Sussexes security in NYC to attend a gala really beneficial to the foundation or to any of the causes the foundation is supposed to be supporting?
Makes the entire thing seem like a vanity project where Meghan and Harry can use Archewell as a piggy bank to pay for the philanthropy cosplaying.
Good news, in the United States, all charities have to file what's called a form 990 with the IRS. These are public, and publicly searchable through various databases, and will inform you of all of this information that you're curious about.
Megan and Harry are paid $0 by the foundation. There are no expenses paid reported relating to their security, or accommodation. There is an extensive list of the grants given that adds up exactly to the amount of money expended by the foundation that year, which range from things like women's health to youth development to community journalism to veterans services.
These forms break down in detail what the foundation spent on office supplies like paper clips, so it would be quite difficult to hide a bunch of security, hotel rooms, and travel within the forms.
I know you have to report travel that you’re expensing to the IRS but it’s not itemized on a publicly available 990 is it?
https://preview.redd.it/8pqt775mys8g1.png?width=634&format=png&auto=webp&s=334b03de0d9244750cdd418712bb7a4f16e48c3f
There's a photo from the 990 form in the article, the numbers people are discussing come from it
The total grants are 1.25 million, the total expenditure is 5.1 mil, including 2.9 mil on "Other" expenses, H&M don't receive a salary but there's no way to confirm that some of the 3 mil went towards their trips' travel or security and passed off as charity expenses
2.9 million on “other” is crazy to me.
Like over half of their expenditures just being “other” is…. Idk. Feels weird. Like imo “other” should be bits and bobs that don’t fit neatly into normal expenditure of a charity not the majority of a charity’s expenditure.
Did you look at the filings? Expenses are not in fact broken down by “paper clips” and most are bulked under other.
So 5.1M in total expenses where 1.2 is in grants. Nobody is saying it’s illegal or fraud.
(in fact, as a lawyer I've spent some time tracking down 990 fraud, and this is one of the most boring and straightforward filings I've ever seen. I've seen everything from Medicare fraud to double reporting of medical expenses to claiming for-profit education as charitable to imaginary charities with fake forms to right-wing money laundering "charities" that look like real charities, but when you start drilling down into their recipients, you discover it's just a network for a couple of rich Republican dudes to give money to slightly less rich Republican dudes who don't actually do anything.
This one is a straightforward and dull as Girl scouts USA. They have the money, they give the money, the money is given to real organizations that really exist, have addresses, help people, and are easy to Google.
There are also multiple independent journalism outlets that are devoted to nothing but tracking down charity fraud, including propublica but also including the ones like charity navigator that tell you what your donation is doing if you give to a particular charity. If Archewell were fucking around, we all already would have found out.
And while I haven't given this a 6-hour comb through like I would do if tracking down actual fraud, but a cursory inspection shows nothing that jumps out; this is an incredibly boring and normal charity. The salaries for the officers leading the charity are, as always, higher than you'd expect. But that is absolutely typical of charities in the United States (partly because your top job or top two jobs spend a lot of time on legal and accounting and technical compliance work, which is the sort of thing that requires an advanced degree in the US) and Archewell only has three staff, so it's not like some well-known "fight X disease" charities I could mention that pay their CEO $1.5 million and have staffs running into the hundreds, and most of their fundraising goes to paying their staff, not to funding any medical research.)
A lawyer that enables fraudulent activity?!
Are “other expenses” itemized? I’m not familiar with US charity reporting
990s have a lot of attached forms, so it'll be like 990 part A, 990 part B, etc. The "plain" 990 Is Justin overall summary of the financials for the year, and then the attached sub forms will give you greater drill down. I'm not well versed enough in this type of charity to tell you exactly what drill downs you get, but there were seven or eight forms attached that would expand on those collective numbers, so presumably you can find out rather a lot.
I'm more about hospital fraud and politicians laundering money through fake charities, so I know a lot more about what kind of subforms to expect there.
(Also some places that index 990s and make them easy to find just put up the vanilla 990 and don't include the sub parts. But they're public documents, you can go to the IRS and find the complete filing. Just remember they will typically be six months to one year delayed, because 2025 isn't even over so you can't even begin preparing the filing for it. And in some cases you're dependent on getting forms from other parties who have a 30 or 90 day period in which they can provide you those forms. So you will necessarily always be reading last year's information at best. But! Once you found the charity you want, you can sit there and read all of their filings going back as far as they have existed, or as far as the IRS has been posting them online if it's a really old charity. That can sometimes help you find a narrative through line of fraud, or more likely a narrative through line of a bad executive who doesn't know what he's doing, or a shift in charity priorities from children's education to women's health or something like that. You can definitely find stories there by dinging through the history of the forms, they just might be kind of interesting and not nefarious. Or they might be very nefarious, you never know.)
That’s a big wall of text when a simple “no” would suffice
My question is how can 3 people use that much money? Is their salary half a mil per year?
So 140k for a communications professional in California is pretty par for the course -- my sister is a mid-career communications professional in California and she makes well over $300k a year (and she don't work for celebrities, she works for an institution, communications professionals are just expensive in California). The two more senior positions I don't know, because I didn't look them up where their jobs up specifically, but I'm guessing it's that between the two of them they have some combination of JD, accounting degree, CPA certification, or various other professional degrees or certifications that make them able to not only manage a charity, but manage all of the legal and financial reporting required, which can be very technical, and can be extremely expensive to hire out to an accounting firm.
Moreover, the CEO usually is the one who goes to jail if the 990 is wrong, because you attesting that the form you are filing is correct under penalty of perjury. This is why accountants and attorneys who prepare SOX filings and annual statements (for for-profit corporations) get paid a lot of money, because they're the ones who get to go to jail if there's an error in the document.
On top of that I would assume just California cost of living bonus.
In my experience, three employees plus the two founders as the board of the charity is pretty slim and efficient, but there are certainly exceptions so don't take that as gospel or as a sign of virtue. But on first glance, I gave my usual eye roll that CEOs of charities make so goddamn much money, but then moved on and noted the small overall staff and thought that seemed pretty normal.
You are their PR agent?
Nope, just a lawyer with a lot of experience with charities and charity fraud, who looks at 990s a lot.
In fact, my claim to fame is I brought down a US congressional campaign, when I was on maternity leave, because the guy just seemed really yelly and defensive about his charities and so I got curious and started digging into the 990s and discovered a whole ton of fraud which I referred to appropriate local prosecutors.
But people who don't deal with charities in the United States are often unaware of form 990, or of how very detailed form 990 is. It's difficult to hide charity fraud in a form 990. People who get away with it usually get away with it because not that many people bother to read form 990 until the scandal is already underway. Because they're particularly long and boring tax documents.
(I've only seen a couple of cases where charity fraud was not obvious from the form 990, and those were billion dollar non-profit hospitals that were doing a bunch of sleight of hand with Medicare, Medicaid, charitable work, and federal funding for meds, student education. You had to know a shit ton about which federal laws enabled each of those funding sources, what they could be used for, and what they could not be used for. They almost all involved double counting med student education costs as Medicare costs. And because of the size and complexity of these non-profit hospitals, the filings can run to 250 pages and you have to track down something from page 108 that's hinky way back on page 211. I would sort of expect private colleges to have the same level of hinkiness (same issues of multiple sources of federal funding, multiple charitable endeavors underway, and a lot of highly paid senior staff who are required by law to be highly educated), but that is not my area of expertise in tracking down form 990 fraud.)
🤣🤣really yelly. And the added bonus of on your maternity leave. Good for him!
I really appreciate you taking the time to break this down. Learned a lot and it was insightful on the MH front. Their names always garner such salacious headlines; this specific headline could have easily (and it seems it has) produced the worst assumptions in this subreddit alone.
So what are the “other” expenses?
There are eight attached schedules to the main 990 (I think in this case -- there can be more or less, depending), and those will break down a lot of those collect-all categories. But I'm in bed with a pre-Christmas flu so I'm not going to do it
I’ve actually just scanned all of the schedules and they are box ticked. No breakdown of expenses at all. I find your walls of text on this matter and claims that you are a lawyer who has uncovered fraud very odd
Yall really hate when anyone counters your odd hate narratives with actual facts and expertise, huh?
There were no facts or expertise. 990s do not list detailed expenses which is what the poster claimed they did
"I'm not familiar with US charity reporting, but because what you're saying doesn't fit into my worldview, also I looked at that form I'm not familiar with and now I know everything and I can say definitively that you don't know what you're talking about and also you're not a lawyer". Odd behavior say the least.
Interesting thanks!
From an objective perspective, a lot of the decisions that Harry and Meghan make re: Archewell seem to not be made with a keen business mind.
Well they are mostly paying for it themselves in the end seeing as how most of the money received by the foundation to begin with is their money that they donated.
That’s not true. Of the $13 million they initially raised, $10 million of it came from a single donation from a Silicon Valley nonprofit. The other $3 million came from another anonymous donor.
Source
Wasn’t the rumor that that initial donation was from Oprah?
Sure but then you don’t have to pay tax on the money so it’s way more profitable (and tax fraud)
whats the fraud?
The person I was replying to was saying it’s not a big deal if they spend charity money on things that should be personal expenses because they’re funding the charity. My point was there’s significant tax advantages to doing so and that’s why doing such a thing would be fraud.
Note: there’s no evidence they’re doing this. More likely then not they’re just running the charity very poorly
Or you could actually read the filing and realize you’re just repeating inaccurate statements. It’s weird to make up reasons to hate people. Just own up that you don’t like them. It’s weird but fine. Lying about this just makes you look bad.
I’m not saying they are. I was just replying to OPs comment that it wouldn’t matter if they did because they fund the charity
That’s… not how that works. At all.
It’s a known tax loophole.
I think they’re just not that good at operating and being the ceos of their projects
What are they good at? 😂
Flower sprinkles.
They hold millions in their accounts and gave more than the W&K Foundation, though.
Making a claim that can be easily checked to see that it is not true is… a choice.
No they didn't, from the Royal Foundation report 9.9 mil on charitable activities which is 86% of money spent, only 1.6 mil (14%) spent on raising funds
https://preview.redd.it/q45ixqklcs8g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0bc8ff8e7ce0f446108f167553b81034daf2b83
The W&K foundation as you call it gave $11million in 2024. They raised $12million. Please stick to facts and don’t bring the other couple in to something that has nothing to do with them.
They technically did not give 11M, the report includes all funds spent including on delivering projects, so that includes the cost of planning, staff and the projects themselves.
But the breakdown is more transparent as you can see the breakdown of funds between the different projects. However W&K have projects that run in house so they’re responsible for developing, planning, executing the projects.
World is healing 🤲
Is the issue that they are taking on projects that are too big for what they can handle at scale or are they just not working with other charities and donors to get things covered?
It's a combination of them taking on too many big projects for such a small charity and them not doing any kind of fundraisers for Archwell.
No that’s never been confirmed anywhere. It’s funnelled through other funds and they’ve never claimed it was them who donated.
Their biggest amount came from some Silicon Valley fund and then the next chunk from fidelity, the donor is anonymous
ETA: tons of foundations are not built on personal wealth, most rely on donors including big ones like the Gates foundation, the Clintons, Obamas etc. W&Ks is through fundraising as well
I edited because you are correct that it's never been confirmed and their donor list is private.
I have major qualms with celebrities that start their own charities in America to pay their salary out of, which is a tax shield for the rich (this is not just harry and Megan, though they are doing the same so I include them).
If you are spending more than 3x's what you are giving on overhead what is the point? Why not give those contributions directly to an already existing non profit (which is really all archwell does from my research) from yourself. You can work to solicit from rich people to donate directly to causes you care about, and throw fundraisers for other non profits directly. So why have a 3rd party charity in the first place? It reduces the amount given to the causes.
Sorry for the rant but I volunteered for decades in the non profit space for many different women's shelter when I was in the military and it is so hard to get funding, volunteers are difficult to find, vet and bring on as opposed to staff, and their wages are laughably low. We need real change and help in this country, and it's bogged down by 501c's that are just using it for legal tax evasion.
But that’s not what is happening here. You can verify they aren’t being paid out of the charitable fund on their 990. It’s easy to confirm so why make things up?
While they aren’t being paid a salary if the charity is paying for travel and clothing and other stuff that they value then their still benefiting from it
They might not be getting a salary but is their charity paying for things like security, travel and accommodation for them?
Running a successful charity is a lot of work even for well run organizations. Donations are needed constantly. Just look at Jane Goodall's constant fundraising. She was on a fund raising tour when she passed away.
This is what Warren Buffet did, and that was hus reasoning: others were already set up and doing the work capabably. Buffett has given billions to the Gates foundation alone.
100%. You are exactly right, and only people that understand the sector get that what they are doing is literally just effective accounting and tax shields for some vanity projects vs doing something actually impactful
This. They don’t have a charitable foundation in the sense that most people think of as providing charity. They have a foundation as a way of writing off huge expenses they incur. The vast bulk of family based foundations/charity/trusts are doing this, so I’m not throwing shade towards them. But it’s a tax vehicle far more than it an organization doing consistent and meaningful work.
Have you actually looked at their 990?
Yes
Can you elaborate on where on the 990 you think they are writing off personal expenditures?
“Other expenses”
Under program service expenses on Schedule O?
The thing about that which confuses me is what "program service expenses" could cost so much that it totals to more than double the amount that this charitable foundation gave away to charitable organizations?
That is my point as well, this isnt a knock specifically towards them, but of this system in general.
There is a lot of tax free money to be made with a charity. Salaries as well. It’s a grift.
but non profits tax returns are publicly available, so you could easily determine of they are getting salaries from their own non profit
Giving out $1.25 million in grants is a good thing for a small charity, but the expenses are insane. I'm sure that comes from the overseas trips to places like Colombia and Nigeria. Travel, security, hotels, and food costs add up when you're paying for yourselves and staff.
I think the problem is that they have really amazing/big ideas, but don't execute them well. They seem to jump into things very quickly without hammering out the fine details.
Wasn’t the Nigeria trip supposedly at the invitation of the Nigerian military for Invictus-related purposes? It seems highly inappropriate if Archewell (which is completely separate from Invictus) was paying the expenses for that trip.
They did events for Invictus and Archewell.
Yikes it’s not it pretty well known that when charities operating expenses are the majority of their expenses that they are generally just scams and you should stay away from donating?
But good on them for finding a tax free way to pay for a lot of their travel, clothing, glam expenses
5.1 million in expenses and only 1.25 million in grants!! I know non profits have huge administrative costs but to exceed donations or grants given out might show that it is struggling. Might be the reason for rebranding which came out before this annual report. Also 3 employees let go right before Christmas.
If this is correct, that is disgusting and not sustainable.. How on earth could expenses be that much? Their business model is upside down.
Flying to those winter time polo matches in Aspen is pricey
I have a feeling that whenever Harry and Meghan are with richer friends, richer friends pick up the tab. So I guess Nacho picked all the bills including providing horses and stuff for Harry in Aspen. His great uncle David and Wallis lived off lavishly in generosity of their richer friends.
I don’t think Nacho is rich. There’s probably even richer people on that polo team for whom letting Harry on the jet or bringing his horse with them is not a big deal
Yes, the figures are true. Seems like Nigeria, Colombia trip might have been in some point funded by themselves. We know celebritiy charities are in very murky area of tax invasion stuff and Archwell is registered in Delaware.
I looked them up on charity navigator- in 2023, their program expense ratio was 88.6%. Now it’s 24.5%. ☹️