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

If it was called "The Sentebale Cup" and it was filmed and included in the Netflix documentary, could the charity have expected a payment for the footage?

I have a couple of thoughts.

No one has asked the question about why Chandauka wanted to remain on a Board whose Trustees gave her a vote of no confidence. Most people would have left and then pursued their grievance. It sounds as though there is something in it for her. Chairs are voluntary roles.

Being a lawyer does not automatically make you qualified as a good Chair. Getting rid of the polo -a lucrative fundraiser - indicates shortsightedness.

Fundraising is about money not colour - you target wealthy individuals and instituions regardless of their colour. I am a self confessed wokie and even I know that it is not necessarily white saviourism to take money from a polo tournament. So I suspect she is referring to something else in that regard.

There is a lot of speculation on here. it is ok to speculate as long as we are clear that it is speculation and not fact.

Thx for sharing this @BemusedAmerican . This whole thing is so odd. I don't understand how a board chair could unilaterally decide to spend $500k on fundraising consultancy. Ultimately that should have been an executive (management team) decision. However, it's possible that the boundaries between executive (i.e the senior management team) and board (the trustees) were quite blurred at Sentebale, with the Chair almost doubling up as a CEO.

I wonder if she started to worry about their dependency on H for fundraising, given that his star isn't exactly in the ascendency, and decided to pursue another strategy, but 500k is a lot more than you'd need to spend in any universe- normally what a charity would do is spend, say, £100k to hire a good trusts and foundations manager to target those donors.

Curiouser and curiouser.

No one has asked the question about why Chandauka wanted to remain on a Board whose Trustees gave her a vote of no confidence. Most people would have left and then pursued their grievance. It sounds as though there is something in it for her. Chairs are voluntary roles.

The Times article and wikipedia both state that Sophie Chandauka had been a Trustee of Sentabale for several years from 2008. So it is a charity that she had a connection to.

Fundraising is not about colour, but in reality, certain models and optics appeal to certain donors and donor groups (individuals, trusts and foundations, HNW, corporates, government) and sometimes those donors are mutually incompatible because it's expensive to cater to all donor sectors. For example, a charity that is very used to being funded by H's personal connections has probably not done a huge amount of monitoring and evaluation because it costs money and they haven't needed to- no-one says "Sure I'll give you $100k to play polo with Harry but first let me check your latest impact report". Conversely that's the first thing a trust or foundation will ask for, and they might be actively put off by the idea of polo type fundraisers , because it suggests that the donors aren't monitoring the impact (impact focused donors like to see other impact focused donors already committed basically).

I'm speculating, but I wonder if she saw that, and decided to bin off the polo in order to improve attractiveness to foundation or "UN" type funders who might give them big, multi year grants which would improve their income predictability, and then either it didn't work or it wasn't given time to work.

That's a really interesting insight @LaPalmaLlama . Thank you.

I don't understand how a board chair could unilaterally decide to spend $500k on fundraising consultancy

Unless I've misunderstood I didn't think the article said she'd decided "unilaterally" - just that this is what's been spent

However it's also why it can be best not to assume too much and instead wait for further developments, including whatever the Charity Commission have to say

Also interested in who were the $500k consultants? Who chose them? Was there just one team? What was the outcome of their consultation?

BTW, African Parks was one of the NGOs behind this situation, which is bad for both people and elephants

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/26/charity-faces-legal-action-after-relocated-elephants-that-allegedly-kill-10-people-malawi-zambia-aoe

From the article you posted @BemusedAmerican

From Lerotholi
“Given how much [the princes] put of themselves and their mothers in this, if you think about this, the name Sentebale, the literal translation is forget-me-not, they clearly named this entity in memory of both their mothers, who were global mothers, I would say. And so for me, I don’t understand why if somebody takes over quote unquote the entity without them, what is that entity in remembrance of?”

This I think is not really the point. Forget-me-not could refer to all the children / people with HIV , children without proper education etc - Ie don't forget them. It's a name with much wider application than just Diana and Mamohato . May not have been what Harry and Seeiso intended but I don't think it questions the "entity" in the way he (L) is implying. & the two princes will always be the founders. I certainly don't think it is one of the most important questions about this whole thing.

Perhaps he’s exhausted from all that’s gone on over the years and doesn’t have a fight left in him, especially if he believes there’s nothing to fight about and the situation will remedy itself anyway.

Perhaps he’s even grown up a bit recently and is understanding the value of not coming out swinging just for the sake of being seen to do something.

Time will tell but I don’t see the fact there hasn’t been a knee jerk reaction to whatever is going on in the form of explanations and the roll of thunder as a weakness.

Not necessarily, if it was an unincorporated association they might be personally liable, but I doubt it was set up that way. The other 3 forms of governance structures don't have trustees personally liable, unless there is wrong doing or negligence on their part.

Just as most companies are set up with limited liability for Board members.

I wondered whether the reference in the People article to the £500,000 fee ie via Harry just reflects his lack of grip on the detail and not being a trustee. The £500,000 spend would need Board approval but Harry isn't on the Board. The chair is surely too knowledgeable and smart - a lawyer! - to spend at that level without minuted board approval.

Edited for typo

Or he thinks only fundraising in the region isn’t going to bring in very much and he’s letting those who want to go down that road get on with it. That it’s not where the source of his financial backers are and it’s now best left to others.

I've checked, it's a charitable company, so trustees not liable as individuals (if no wrong doing or negligence)

She may well have contributed a lot over the years, and feel as much of a sense of ownership as the patrons.

This is incredibly helpful insight @LaPalmaLlama

So what you're saying in layman's terms is that Dr C wanted to make it a more 'grown up', 'professionalised' charity rather than the rather cosy and opaque cottage charity which it had previously been?

Maybe in response to Harry being less involved since he moved to LA and lost the support structure of the Palace which guided his charitable endeavours.

Equally, she could have been fighting a losing battle with the the nepotism of the makeup of the board of trustees, Harrys' buddies and Seeisos' family,

I would imagine the composition of the board, friends and family of the founders, has influenced Harry and Seeiso (fake) resigning in support of their board of trustees, probably not a good look.

Also, Harry's polo documentary didn't do the polo world any favors since it had bad reviews and poor viewing numbers.

I watched a couple of episodes, hoping to learn something about polo. Sadly, it was dull and I learnt very little. A missed opportunity!

Yes, in one of the articles, it stated that James Blunt did a gig at one of the trustees homes in the UK. They were old army chums. Raised a lot of money.

The fundraising seemed very informal and was aimed around Harry’s chums having a bit of fun and putting their hands in their pockets.

If she wanted to establish a more formal framework, with the idea of attracting money from various worldwide groups, I can see how the posh polo pals fundraising efforts would clash against this.

The model Dr C is proposing is presumably about sustainability. Harry and his pals won't be around for ever. I can see how this might be a difficult thing to accept for a prince and his coterie. This very British style of fundraising would presumably grate on Dr C (just as it did on me years ago to have to promote a fan museum because a board member's wife had founded it 🤯).

There is even the possibility that Harry pulled the plug or warned of smaller contributions from the polo fundraisers. I got the impression from Polo the series that a few of them saw the possibilities of a reality show and maybe going a different direction.

It will be interesting to see what the actual nature of Dr. C's whistleblowing to the Charity Commission is? Interesting that the press is focussing on the board/trustee/patron interfighting and has not really reported on the fact there is an ongoing Charity Commission investigation.

What was the reason given for Senetable's CEO - Richard Millar resigning in December? Wasn't he running the charity from London?

I know, Baital, but in light of the allegations made it's the possible "wrongdoing or negligence" I was thinking of

However they are just allegations for now, so we can't yet know how it'll play out

This is quite often what happens when founders sort of stick around but stop being actively involved - they want 'their' organisation to continue and can't allow other people to take it forward. I've seen it happen four times over the last 25 years or so with organisations I have been involved in.

Founder feels burnt out/ life has moved on. They bring in someone with new energy and ideas, they are all excited about new directions... and then can't cope with change.