Harry resigns from Sentebale, the charity he founded!

[AtIusvue]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14536443/prince-Harry-resigns-charity-cofounder-leadership-row.html

or

The Times

https://archive.ph/GWUac

I suspect you are correct. To be fair, there was probably a good intention, but it's all about the polo.

I don't know about that, her statements were in response to the release of the 'non released' statement from Harry and Seesio. Sentebale also claim they had not received any resignation letter from their two patrons.

She did a very robust rebuttal to the 'non released' released statement and good on her, she probably saw that that as another example of trying to bully and intimidate her.

But of course, that's how boardroom bust-ups work!

It'll be heavily lawyered too, so a lot of the juiciest stuff probably won't make it in.

I'm sure Harry, who in his own words is a warrior for truth, slaying the dishonest dragons of the media, will be preparing a fierce and righteous rebuttal. I look forward to reading it.

There's two sides to everything but put those sides together, read between the lines and you often end up with something near the truth. I am particularly interested in the allegations of bullying, racism and harrassment and what is meant by those (and WHO is alleged to have done it).

Either way, this story is going to run and run, and we're going to have a great time discussing it :-)

And yet it was Harry and Seesio who were forced out of a charity that meant a great deal to them (even if they only made a token effort at involvement).

We don’t know enough to declare fault. Even the high court injunction would just have been about the legality of pushing her out, not a comment on the management, as that is how the law works. So we can be clear there was a boardroom bust up, but not where to apportion fault.

As I see it, Dr C's accusations were extraordinary, and very personal. I can't think of a similar example of an embattled CEO getting quite so personal. (Maybe when the Tavistock Clinic was collapsing but that was a more straightforward case of medical whistleblowing.)

Every accusation Dr C made is actionable for libel, and Harry's lawyers can easily argue that the accusations are person to him - she does everything but name him.

For Dr C's legal counsel to get comfortable with her issuing that extraordinary statement, they must be comfortable that there is documented evidence to support her claims. So I'm confident that that evidence exists, and based on Dr C's PR rep's follow up comment, I'm pretty confident they're going to publish some of the evidence.

Jeez...I KNEW I shoulda bought shares in that popcorn company when I had the chance :-)

Ah OK. I thought there would be a board of operational management overseen by a board of trustees who meet regularly but aren't in charge of the day to day.

That is almost the case, the trustees don't do the actual work of the charity. That is overseen by a chief exec and directors for the two countries they work in, Botswana and Lesotho. Those are salaried positions. No board of management though I expect those senior staff have meetings.

The trustees are unpaid, have more of an oversight role, and legal responsibility IIUIC.

AFAICS (I may have missed it) they don't have a dedicated fundraising director/officer and that seems to be dealt with by the trustees, but I'm unclear on this point.

100%

This article gives a a slightly more info.

So the source concedes it was just a bunch of white men, that they were reliant on posho pals playing polo. It was a model of fundraising that that the Chair obviously found wasn’t right for this era and others agreed with this. The consultancy group was also female led. Now the board must have approved all this change.

Sounds like because there was a fall out with a posho polo pal with the Chair, and the polo match didn’t go ahead, that’s why the funding dropped- so they wanted to get rid.

Basically this whole thing was just a way to play polo….and there’s a nice bit of change at the end . They didn’t want to change the way the fundraise….because it was all about the jolly polo days. Harry never bothered to find other ways to fundraise. He never even visited the country for 6 years!!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/26/accusations-and-resignations-mark-remarkable-24-hours-at-charity-founded-by-prince-harry

‘Over a 20-year career, Chandauka has worked for some of the world’s biggest companies, including Meta, Morgan Stanley and the Virgin Group. She inherited a successful charity but one that some concede had become reliant on the annual Sentebale polo cup and a certain section of society dipping into their pockets.
According to one account, the charity survived the financial fallout of the Covid pandemic largely thanks to a pro bono performance by the pop star James Blunt, who was previously an army officer in the Household cavalry, at the Cotswold home of the previous chair, Johnny Hornby.
Chandauka “wanted to do it differently”, said a source. It is understood that a decision was made to hire the “women-led strategy firm” Lebec at a significant cost. This led to a shift of the charity’s leadership away from London to southern Africa. Fundraising efforts would also now be focused more on the west coast of the US than the shires, according to one source.
Last April, Lebec “convened a reception, panel discussion and intimate dinner to highlight Sentebale’s impactful work” at the Zaytinya restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton on Miami’s South Beach.
There was then a visit by Harry to Lesotho and Johannesburg with executives from potential donors, including Google.
Insiders who have worked in Sentebale said they could understand the move away from “a bunch of white blokes”. It was also one that chimed with the wider thinking in Africa about the role of western charities.
Prof Bhekinkosi Moyo, at Wits business school at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, said: “There is value in proximity. A number of times institutions fly in, almost like they are parachuting into the region.
“They struggle with localisation, but also they struggle with understanding what the issues are, because culturally they may not be attuned to what’s going on … That notion of a white gaze or parachuting in to solve people’s problems.”
The problem for Sentebale, according to one insider, was that the strategy did not elicit the major donations that had been foreseen.
“They got back, and I think the story was because Donald Trump’s come these donors aren’t as interested as we thought,” a source said. “I think the trustees then started moving towards thinking she should stand down.”’

That People article couldn't have been more clear who was talking to them. Harry would have only been 21/22 years old when this was set up so I would imagine he was quite naive when he started and the majority of the work was done by someone else.

I would agree that spending £600k on consultants is a bad look for the charity, but it sounds like they are doing a major pivot re funding.

The interesting thing I took away was that the Sentebale polo match didn't take place last year. I wonder if this was what caused the rift? It would appear to be a main source of income.

Sophie seems to be really sticking up for herself. She seems like a strong woman.

The video people keep talking about? I just watched it out of curiosity. Chandauka is squashed next to Harry. Her arm is stretched across awkwardly across him to hold the trophy. Meghan asks if she wants to come over to stand beside her. This gives Chandauka a better photo opportunity, less awkward. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would read anything more into it.

There’s no way they could continue with the charity just being a cover for posh men playing polo. She’s obviously tried to change the way they fundraise, which the trustees have kicked back on……. they want their polo day!

Also, just shows all that was written at the time about the awkward interaction with Meghan & Dr Chanduka at the polo match was correct…..there clearly was underlying tension.

This woman isn’t going down without a fight. I don’t think Harry will have ever experienced anything like this.

His days of galavanting the world doing princely charity work, I think may be coming to an end.
Even Invictus games…..I can’t see how that will continue. The next games, I think the US will drop out. I think they will struggle to fundraise in this climate too.

Someone mentioned board room bust up although it looks like it is the trustees who resigned - the board is separate - I looked at Companies House (for the board ) and charity commission website for the trustees yesterday.

If white polo matches in the West get its main revenue and shifting to raise funds in Miami and Africa has failed then I don't think the people being helped in Africa then benefit as the aim is to raise funds. If the Africa strategy is working and there is more revenue than before then that's great. It should all be about how much money is raised to help the charity's aims.

People magazine have an 'inside' scoop on what went on behind the scenes, (wonder who dropped those tips to People),

Yes, indeed.

We were all wondering just who Chandauka could possibly have been referring to when she spoke about people who "play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct."

Because Meghan has sod all to do with the polo or Sentebale! The photo should have been Dr Sophie and PH the rest of the team around, no Meghan, she didn't belong. Not only does she get her face in, she makes sure she's front and centre, between PH and who ever so she can't be cut out / cropped.
My DH participates in a sport with one other person, I don't get into all their photos when they get prizes ffs it's ridiculous

The polo Day brought in a lot of funds.

When Chandauka took over as Chair the organisation lost much of its income. Perhaps this is due to Trump's initiatives (perhaps the withdrawal of aid to all charities on the African continent?) Who knows?

These are complex matters. Harry tried to do something good but the world is changing. I think he is right to extricate himself from this and to let it play out between the Chair and the trustees.

Her statements play into the negative narrative surrounding Harry. Would she do that if he was still the world's darling boy and a member of the royal family. I don't think so. What this shows is that Harry now has the status of an outsider (more excoriated than his uncle Andrew). It sounds as though Chandauka might be exploiting that, but what do I know? I will wait to see what else is revealed in time.

Telegraph:

‘The charity was plunged into chaos following Dr Chandauka’s arrival, sources claimed, as she took “a wrecking ball” to the organisation and “decimated” it beyond recognition. The board was aghast when their efforts to remove Dr Chandauka from her position resulted in her lodging a High Court claim against Sentebale earlier this month, and feared the mammoth cost of such action would prove its final nail in the coffin.
Dr Chandauka made a series of allegations concerning racism, sexism and bullying.
As such, they decided to resign en masse, effectively negating the need for the claim to be pursued.’

Now if you believe that someone has taken over your charity and wrecked it- why would you walk away. Why wouldnt Harry, pay to fight the case? I get that they didn’t want to use charity funds…..but why didn’t he pay? He has now left the charity, and left it in the hands of someone he believes has destroyed it? Doesn’t make sense.

This wouldn’t be the sort of money that’s he’s paying for his other cases. Cases which he is fighting; because he believes in the principle of it- not because it’s likely to yield results.

The security case for example, there’s no way at the end of it, he is getting his previous security status. It’s not happening. Yet he is spending crazy sums, in the hope that they court may say that RAVEC made some mistakes when making the decision. But everyone acknowledges that the decision would remain rhetorical same however. So he’s spending money for nothing.

But he won’t fight this????

I suspect that Dr Chanduka must have some receipts

I was puzzled by this too! The pale has historically meant a boundary and was derived from Latin (palus ie pole/stake used to create a boundary) When did it become a question of colour? Here’s an example.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Calais

If white polo matches in the West get its main revenue and shifting to raise funds in Miami and Africa has failed then I don't think the people being helped in Africa then benefit as the aim is to raise funds. If the Africa strategy is working and there is more revenue than before then that's great. It should all be about how much money is raised to help the charity's aims.

It’s not that simple for most charities though, they do have to mindful about the optics of how they raise their money. I don’t think you’d find many who accept money from tobacco producers these days, for example (British American Tobacco ends up largely working with NGOs these days for example, or funding their own charity). There has been a lot of talk about the problems of charities in developing countries just offering “White Saviour” opportunities.

Here we go with the unhinged obsessed comments. Why not only include Philip, Charles , Camila, Andrew in your comment and get it all over with🥱

This is interesting to see play out. I think, I hope, Harry will soon realise he needs to grow up. His responses and reactions always seem slightly juvenile. Each story has 3 sides, but I'm glad she's not backing down, or redacting, or sugarcoating everything.

So under one type of leadership the charity was paying its manager a six-figure salary as well as paying for his fully-staffed villa and for his three children to attend foreign boarding schools but under the other type of leadership it was paying six-figure sums to consultancies. Either way it does give credence to the idea that charities end up being a hugely inefficient and questionable way of solving problems. Money, perks, kudos and glamorous events for those at the top and the crumbs off the table to the needy and the volunteers.

Also, on the “beyond the pale” discussion, I had always understood that this derived from Latin and the way the Roman army would fortify a temporary army camp.

The soldiers would dig a ditch all the way around the camp (a fossa), throwing the earth that they were excavating inside towards the camp, and this earth would then be compacted into a wall (a vallum) with a fence of stakes (palum) then placed along the top of the wall. So if you wanted to attack the camp, you’d have to go down into the ditch, up over the top of the wall that’s high above you and negotiate the stakes. Easily defensible! (In a permanent camp, they’d also build a proper wall behind this, as shown in the diagram).

We get lots of words from this - a palisade, a wall, a fossa still means a trench in anatomical terms. And the use of “pale” to mean a boundary line.

What concerns me here is that, with the resignation of Prince Seeiso, the charity has effectively lost Royal endorsement.

I cannot emphasise enough how important the chieftaincy structure still is in Lesotho, to do anything you need the goodwill of local village and district chiefs. And now the paramount chief and kings brother has resigned.

Dr Sophie Chandauka is also not going to be viewed as "local" by the Basotho.

Harry won't pay because his money is his. His mission is to persuade other folk to part with theirs.

The Post comment section is the best

Now if you believe that someone has taken over your charity and wrecked it- why would you walk away. Why wouldnt Harry, pay to fight the case? I get that they didn’t want to use charity funds…..but why didn’t he pay? He has now left the charity, and left it in the hands of someone he believes has destroyed it? Doesn’t make sense.

This is what I have been wondering.

The charity means a great deal to him and he is apparently devastated to have to walk away from it. So why flight rather than the fight then? He has the financial means to take this on but has decided to step away and leave it in the hands of someone who he believes doesn't have the charity's (and the needs of the local communities) best interests at heart and to see it all go to the wall.

Something definitely not adding up.

I really do hope it's not a case of no polo, no likey.