£12.1 million spent on Earthshot, £5 million of it prize money

[antelopevalley]

Maybe I am out of touch? Does it really cost £7.1 million to judge entrants to international competition and then put on a prize-giving ceremony?

www.thesun.co.uk/news/19477174/william-kate-charity-thrives-harry-meghan/

What about all the infrastructure? Staff costs (plus pensions and NI which add up), office premises, shares of HR, IT etc. website build and maintenance. Then promotion of the competition, handling queries, expenses and possibly payments for the judges. Probably expenses for invited finalists to the award show. International travel adds up! The event it's self if there's venue hire, catering, decoration, drinks etc.

I understand all those costs. I have organised international events, although obviously far less high profile.
Invited finalists do not usually get expenses, but even if they did, a flight, a hotel and meals for a couple of days is not that much.
I can only see it costing this amount if all staff were way overpaid, then venue and catering was as expensive as possible, very expensive office accommodation, etc. And even then it is a fantastic amount of money.

Does anyone know if there are published accounts of the breakdown of costs? I know these would be available for ordinary charities.

They also produced a series of tv documentaries (5 in all) about each of the award categories, the nominees and other initiatives in that area. When you think of usual tv production costs, that sounds pretty cheap, to be honest!

Were the TV documentaries part of this cost?
I assumed the BBC paid for those or at least bought them covering the cost?

The BBC was broadcast partner, but Silverback Films produced the series. Although the production credit on the series is to Earthshot Studios Limited, which lists Silverback Films as a creditor (so it paid some funds to Silverback).

I think it unlikely that some of the funding for the series didn’t come from the Royal Foundation, to be honest. (There were lots of other donors too, whose funds could have also contributed)

sounds like a waste of a lot of money.

That’s only one year of Earthshot (intended to be a ten year project, giving out £50m in grants) and that tabloid link doesn’t say what the spending (other than prizes) was actually on.

Anyone seen the actual accounts, rather than The Sun’s headline version?

That does sound like a lot.

Reading the annual accounts, they also mention the production costs of the Earthshot book, and the fact that over a thousand submissions were received by the date that nominations for the second year of the Prize closed in March 2022 - that’s going to require some expert time and costs to assess all the submissions and create shortlists for finalists (and they would have needed to done this for the 2021 awards also).

The accounts also show that only 1.7m was spent on Earthshot in the previous financial year, so it’s clear that there weren’t a lost of costs that were front-loaded, they all took place in the first year of the awards.

Obviously, you are not going to agree, but the £7.1m covers plenty more than just the awards ceremony and it seems it covered plenty of actual activities.

@Serenster can you post a link to these accounts?

And judges for prestigious awards are not normally paid, although the initial sifting is usually done by staff.

You know all about the remuneration arrangements for prestigious awards but you don’t know how to use google…? 👀

I have googled and can not find the financial accounts. So yes please post a link.

I am reading people online saying that £7.1 million was spent on the prize-giving ceremony, so it would be good to know the truth.

royalfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Trustees_report_and_annual_accounts_2021_signed.pdf

Here you go. Other then the £5m in grants to the winners you won’t find much more detail of where the remaining £6.5m was spent after the support and governance costs of £508,234 are removed (they are broken down on p31), though.

Given that the support costs show by far the largest expenses for premises, IT and HR out of all the Royal Foundation projects, it’s a fair assumption that Earthshot had the most people working on it. The fact that it’s now a standalone charity also suggests that it was a bigger group doing far more than just a prizegiving ceremony.

@Serenster Thanks. But in spite of the accounts giving no real information about where the money was spent, you were fairly confidently upthread saying what you thought the money was spent on. Are you an employee or friend with inside information? Or were those comments just guesses on your part since the accounts tell us nothing?

Reading the annual accounts, they also mention the production costs of the Earthshot book, and the fact that over a thousand submissions were received by the date that nominations for the second year of the Prize closed in March 2022 - that’s going to require some expert time and costs to assess all the submissions and create shortlists for finalists (and they would have needed to done this for the 2021 awards also).

The accounts also show that only 1.7m was spent on Earthshot in the previous financial year, so it’s clear that there weren’t a lost of costs that were front-loaded, they all took place in the first year of the awards.

That stuff? If you read the accounts, you will see all of that comes from them.

Hmmm. Those accounts offer lots of waffle and entirely unsurprisingly not a lot of detail.

^2021 saw material costs incurred on the Earthshot Prize awards
ceremony and related cost of the prizes^

What material costs?

Why are they leasing office space when there are endless offices available in royal accommodation?

Why is there a million pound + cost to 'raising funds' when your face and brand are one of the most recognisable in the world? Are they outsourcing their jollies?

Spending £7m to dish out £5m in prizes is obscene but the whole Earthshot thing is mired in hypocrisy anyway so hardly surprising.

I wonder if the Royals paid themselves to raise funds?

Why is there a million pound + cost to 'raising funds' when your face and brand are one of the most recognisable in the world? Are they outsourcing their jollies?

Most charities have paid fundraising teams (because it is an important job!). Have a scroll down the jobs listed at this charity recruitment site if you don’t believe me:

jobs.thirdsector.co.uk/jobs/fundraising/

Most charities do not have the recognition and contacts a charity run by the Royal Family have.
I believe they spent that amount, I am suspicious about how much was necessary expenditure.

I mean - pick a big, high profile, well-funded charity of your choice and compare? I looked at GOSH (Great Ormond Street Hospital) and they spent more than £10m on direct fundraising costs plus £7.9m to support their fundraising in the last financial year. The year before, it was £24m.

The Royal foundation also spent 8% on their income for the last year on fundraising costs, whereas GOSH spent 27% of their income on fundraising.

I suppose The Princes Trust would also be a useful comparison? They spent just under £12m on fundraising costs in the last year.

When all's said and done they raised approximately 2/3 less than the Donkey Sanctuary managed during the pandemic amd spent a very similar amount in fundraising:

www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/sites/uk/files/2021-10/_report-and-accounts-2020.pdf

That’s fantastic news about the Donkey Sanctuary - I had heard of them but had no idea they were so well supported! 😀