I feel for Harry and Meghan when I see the clickbait headlines in the usual tabloids. They tend to gain momentum with mainstream media, who run with disparaging claims with little investigating and fact-checking.
Here’s an interesting, different take on the situation.
”The charity is small but important. It does lifesaving work in an area of the world where the HIV-AIDS epidemic is still raging. In the tiny state of Lesotho alone, more than 37,000 children are estimated to be living with HIV, many unaware of their condition.”
”Insiders claim the new chair of the charity, Sophie Chandauka, sought to “de-colonise” the organisation, moving it away from fundraising via celebrity Polo matches and the like but without first establishing alternatives.
A hefty bill for consultants said to be in the region of $500,000, a failed bid to bring in replacement donors from the US, and an alleged request by Ms Chandauka for a $300,000 salary for her unpaid position prompted the trustees to ask her to step down.”
“For the chair of a charity to refuse to step down having lost the confidence of its long-serving trustees and patrons is bizarre.”
I feel for Sophie Chandauka. She is being bullied on-line and enduring racist comments. Her interview with Trevor Phillips was very articulate and thoughtful. Prince Harry also bullied her and sent an "unpleasant’ and ‘imperious’ note asking Sophie to ‘explain herself’ when she would not publicly defend his wife after she was seen causing confusion and trying to take control of a photo op after a celebrity polo match. This polo match had also taken months of planning which was then turned on it’s head when Harry wanted to bring a Netflix crew, causing a last minute change of location and plenty of headaches, and also calls into question how a charitable event turned into a commercial opportunity for Harry. I think Sophie is right to move fundraising away from celebrity polo matches, that are probably a huge expense to run, with very little profit left for the charity.
The Prince William link to this is ridiculous.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds with the UK Charity Commission .
This is absolutely in line with the direction that nonprofit fundraising is taking. High overhead, celebrity-driven event fundraising is providing diminishing returns in this market, and high impact, low administrative overhead funding is far more sustainable and effective.
Sounds like Chandauka herself is abreast of the industry best practices, but perhaps not everybody was ready for the shift.
Unfortunate that it has turned ugly, when it may have simply been a well-intentioned but poor fit when she was hired (which happens ALL the time in nonprofit fundraising ask me how I know ).
The part of the interview I saw did not impress me…at all. There are a lot of questions concerning her claims.
I wonder what the books show, but I understand this sentiment. Imo it’s more important that the article mentioned she hadn’t been able to establish alternative revenue streams.
I sincerely hope so.
Interesting indeed. I guess we’ll have to be patient. In the meantime some things are coming to light.
She has stated that she did not spend that sum. However, she probably did spend some amount of money on consultants to help the charity, but that is not the point of her complaints against Harry and the Trustees. You are getting caught up in semantics. She is trying to help the kids in Africa. As chair, she is trying to move the charity forwards, and I am pretty sure the money spent on consultants is normal, and is insignificant compared to the cost of the polo matches. The claims of her taking a salary are also false - she is a voluntary worker, plus her family have heavily donated to the charity.
At the end of the day, she is trying to move the charity forwards, and away from rich white men who play polo on the charities dime in order to feel good about making a little bit of money in profit for the charity.
I wonder where The Times got those figures if she says she did not spend that sum. There are lots of questions.
But this part seemed very odd to me: “For the chair of a charity to refuse to step down having lost the confidence of its long-serving trustees and patrons is bizarre.”
You are missing the point. You are blinded for some reason. it’s ‘bizarre’ because their PR says it is. These white men didn’t think that an intelligent black woman would look at the books and make changes to the charity for the better. She has replaced them with a powerful team of mostly black women on the leadership team and as trustees who are working in the region not in the UK or the US. She is helping the charity while Harry is hindering it to his own advantage.
This is comparing apples and oranges. Hiring consultants to reposition the charity is purely a cost, unless they create savings (eg by laying people off). Running a polo match as a fundraiser has costs but also generates revenues from ticket sales, sponsorships etc. Is there any basis for suggesting that the polo matches were lossmaking?
I also think that hiring consultants at a charity (on anything other than a pro bono basis) is not so “normal” in the UK as it might be in the US. And it is the UK Charity Commission that is investigating.
But more than anything else, if you lose the confidence of your board and patrons, refusing to step down as CEO is utterly bizarre. Sue for constructive dismissal if you want, but if you refuse to go then basically you’ve destroyed the organization.
Well yeah - I think that is what she is doing by going to the UK charity commission. She has lost confidence in them to do the right thing, so a change needs to be implemented for the better of the charity I guess.
Consultants (at rates in the 6 figures) are as ubiquitous in the UK as they are here.
More often than not, boards split into factions. Based on my own experience having navigated a few board-driven separations, I would guess that she retained the confidence of the staff and some key board members, and she lost the confidence of other board members. Harry’s presence as patron complicates the power dynamic, possibly tilting it in an unnatural direction.
Nonprofits are insanely political (in the power sense, not partisan politics). Celebrity patronage only makes them more dysfunctional. Most people have absolutely no idea how charities make their numbers work, and the fact that Meghan brought Serena Williams as her unannounced guest, that tells me that Meghan also has no idea how these things actually come together behind the scenes.
You seem to be blaming “white men” and racism for this, despite Harry’s co-patron being Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, who has also resigned.
Here’s one of the trustees giving her side of the story (gift link):
“After a recent partnership deal fell through, the board attempted to remove Chandauka from her post but she refused to budge. After a lawsuit from Chandauka that former trustees characterised as a move to block the mutiny, they had no choice but to resign en masse.”
It seems clear that there’s been a complete breakdown in the relationship between Chandauka and her board. As someone who has been on the board of both public companies and non-profits, I can assure you that if that happens it should be the CEO who has to leave, not the board. A CEO who is trying to stay put by suing and then brandishing accusations of racism in the press is going to destroy the organization not save it. It is telling that the patrons aligned with the trustees, not Chandauka.
No, the whole board resigned. Unanimity in these circumstances is unusual, as are the actions of the patrons. She has tried to bring in someone aligned with her (Rawlinson) who according to the Times article posted earlier “has also been paid by the charity. He received £24,000 for his consultancy services and is said to be owed a further £66,000…Global Philanthrophic, a fundraising consultancy where Rawlinson had served as both the director and chair, also received £21,600 from Sentebale during this period.”
The UK Charity Commission will figure out the real story. At the end of the day, Harry should not use a charity for his own commercial enterprise, which is what happened when he involved Netflix.
This is understandable and makes sense, but it seems she has no plan for replacing those lost financial donations.
I don’t have a side in this, but there is risk to Harry if the emails that he supposedly sent to Chandauka asking her to make a statement in support of Meghan after the polo fundraiser are released and they do show unbecoming behavior.
It seems more like Chandauka’s attempts to cultivate a new source of US donations (independent of the patrons, ie Harry) via the consulting arrangements fell through. From the other Times article:
In total, between June 2023 and January 2025, the organisation spent £427,497 on media and website consultants, a higher expenditure than during previous years. Although a spokesman for Sentebale has stated that the board “acted collectively on major decisions”, a source close to the departed patrons suggested the total spend on consultants was closer to £500,000. They added: “It’s important to note that this decision was made unilaterally, without board approval.”
…
A source close to the situation said: “All of a sudden there were huge amounts being spent on consultants and there didn’t feel like there was anything to show for it. It was hoped that they would bring in lots of fundraising but that didn’t happen. To spend nearly £500,000 on consultants at a charity that raises around £1.5 million a year seemed ludicrous.
“When a deal with a potential donor fell through in December, many of the trustees began to think that her strategy wasn’t working.”
It is understood that Chandauka raised the money for the consultants separately and that the Lebec arrangement helped to connect the charity with US philanthropists and led to conversations that are said to be “ongoing”.
A Sentebale spokesman said: “In November 2023, Sentebale engaged Lebec and its team of six consultants to provide tools and strategic guidance on how to better prepare for entry into the US marketplace and build credibility. Over the course of a 12-month engagement, Lebec successfully delivered against every single deliverable, including facilitating 65 key connections with potential strategic partners, connectors, advisory board members and funders.
“These relationships were transferred to Sentebale when Lebec completed its formal engagement in October 2024 on the understanding that Sentebale would nurture these relationships to support its fundraising and impact efforts.”
…maybe that’s why she stated in her interview that Harry’s ‘brand’ is toxic and hindering the charity. Perhaps the drama that surrounds Harry and Meghan was off-putting to the potential new relationships
And in these circumstances, any sensible CEO who believed that would resign. Let’s say you were in charge of a charity set up by a celebrity who had become toxic, but they are the key source of fundraising and the board is made up entirely of their friends. And the whole purpose of the charity is to promote the patron’s area of interest. A fictitious example might be a charity set up by Donald Trump to campaign for more commercial real estate development or a charity set up by Elon Musk to promote assisted reproductive technologies.
Do you a) resign to find another way to pursue those goals or b) try to repurpose the charity without the support of your board and patrons?
..but Harry, as the key source of fundraising, is not bringing in enough money for Sentebale to succeed. She can see that, and wants to take the charity into a different direction so that in can succeed in the future. My sense is, if she had resigned, the charity would eventually fail, but she is trying to avoid this, as she is much closer to the charity than Harry and his chums.
I have no doubt that Harry has nothing but the best intentions with Sentebale. But it’s important for the international aid community to disentangle itself from the “white savior” model of giving. We are seeing in real time that capricious external actors can undo many generations’ worth of excellent work here with USAID etc.
Back on the celebrity side of things, I wonder if the failure of the POLO show at Netflix is involved here. Maybe a long term partnership with Netflix was contingent upon the series being renewed as it would have provided ample “free” exposure for Sentebale.
I am not familiar with Feminegra so I paused before posting the link. However it is an interesting take on the situation.
Personally I’ve never been on the board of a nonprofit. However the part that concerned me was under the heading “Conflict of Interest and Lack of Transparency”. Is it common practice to place consultants on a board if they’ve worked for the nonprofit and are familiar with its mission?
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