Charity spent 98% of money raised on salary for employees – media
A royal charity that has none other than the Queen as its patron spent a whopping 98% of the money it raised in 12 months on salaries for its 10 employees, the Daily Mail claims.
According to the report, the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust (QTC) had accumulated £796,106 from donations in the period from March 2020 to March 2021, £787,314 of which allegedly went straight into the coffers of its staff. The charity’s five top executives are said to have raked in more than half of that sum – £420,000 – the Daily Mail claims, citing Charity Commission accounts. The paper learned that the Trust’s chief executive made at least £140,000 that year.
The Queen set up the charity back in 2018, with its main goal defined as providing funding, tools, and support for young Commonwealth leaders to help them transform their communities across agriculture, education, employability, and more.
Commenting on the amount of money spent on salaries, a QTC spokesperson told the Mail that “on April 1, 2021 QCT restructured reducing the size and costs of its senior team.” The move will translate into a “substantially lower” spend “on the Senior Management Team” in the current financial year, the QTC representative said, according to the newspaper.
Earlier, the royal charity received some media attention after it endorsed US mental health app BetterUp, which has Prince Harry as its chief impact officer. The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust has featured testimonials which characterize the coaching app as “truly phenomenal.”
Incidentally, Prince Harry used to serve as the QCT’s president before he stepped down from his royal duties.
The QCT revealed to the Daily Mail, however, that the partnership with BetterUp is not a one-way street where the US coaching business is the sole beneficiary, receiving favorable publicity. According to the paper citing a QCT spokesperson, BetterUp is providing young leaders with some of its services free of charge.
The QCT representative, as cited by the Daily Mail, described the company that Price Harry works for as providing “substantial benefit to the Young Leaders supported by QCT so that they are better prepared for the pressures of running social enterprises.” The charity added that BetterUp’s assistance was a “generous one-off gift from Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, as the Former President of QCT, in order to support young people.”
