bitchy | Sophie Chandauka is closing Sentebale’s UK office & canceling polo fundraisers

Back in March, Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso resigned as patrons for Sentebale, the charity they co-founded in honor of their mothers. Sophie Chandauka was the reason why they stepped down – as Sentebale’s chair, Chandauka was looting the charity’s reserves and blowing money on high-priced “consultants” who didn’t do anything or bring in any extra money. When the board of trustees asked Chanauka to step down, she ran to the British Charity Commission and lied her ass off, claiming that she was being bullied by racists. She kept giving unhinged interviews and making a horse’s ass out of herself for months. During that time, the Charity Commission investigated both sides. They cleared Harry and everyone else of bullying and harassment, but they did nothing to rein in Chandauka’s sinister actions within Sentebale.

To this day, Chandauka is still Sentebale’s chair, though almost all of the original trustees have resigned in disgust. In August, we learned that Chandauka mothballed Sentebale’s Children’s Center in Lesotho, a center which provided critical care to kids with HIV. We also learned that she’s blowing through the cash reserves of the charity, and she fired almost all of Sentebale’s London staff. Well, on Friday, Chandauka finally revealed Sentebale’s current finances, and she and Iain Rawlinson – a longtime associate of Prince William – also announced that they closing Sentebale’s London office. Not only that, but Sentebale will no longer have fundraising polo matches.

No more polo matches: Sentebale has scrapped its fundraising polo matches after a row with the Duke of Sussex. The charity based in southern Africa said it would stop using the sport as a way of raising money as it distances itself from the Duke after a bullying and racism dispute. Funds raised from the Sentebale ISPS Handa Polo Cup – which the Duke personally took part in – represented 18 per cent of the charity’s income last year. However, a report into its yearly accounts published on Friday showed that polo would no longer feature as the charity’s flagship fundraiser.

Iain Rawlinson the weasel: Rawlinson, a member of Sentebale’s board of trustees, told the Telegraph: “These polo games, which attract great generosity from high-net worth individuals or funds who want to support the charity – those events definitely have their place. We’re not being critical about that as a concept. The reason for [dropping it] is it puts quite a lot of pressure on individuals, and it can mask structural weakness in the financial model of the charity.”

Rawlinson on Harry’s generosity: As an example, he cited the Duke’s £1.2m donation from the proceeds of his memoir, Spare, as masking “the fault lines in the financial model which had really been producing losses since 2017… Those problems can be summarised by saying there was a very narrow but very loyal donor base for the charity. But it also masked the very high level of cost…where those costs could only be borne by the virtue of the generosity of Prince Harry.” He explained that what future donating organisations would like to see is “a more resilient financial model, which is not dependent on a single patron, for example”.

No more London office: Elsewhere in the accounts, the closure of Sentebale’s former London office, which was costing the charity £650,000 yearly, was listed as part of an effort to reduce £1m a year. Mr Rawlinson said: “If you have got a £600,000 plus cost in the centre of the organisation, which is not programme specific and can’t be recovered through programmes, you have to go and do events. You have to lean on the patron to play polo, you have to do all of that type of thing. And then that creates a certain modus operandi in the organisation.”

[From The Telegraph]

The Telegraph’s report also included quotes from Chandauka, which read as corporate double-speak, lies and bullsh-t. Don’t even bother. They’re still doing the most to blame Harry for… financially supporting a charity HE founded to honor HIS mother. They have a grudge against Harry for… giving millions of dollars to Sentebale and organizing polo fundraisers. They claim that model wasn’t sustainable. Well… we’re seeing Chandauka and Rawlinson’s sustainability in action. They lost the Sentebale polo matches’ main donor. Most of the old donors left with Harry and Seeiso. Chandauka is looting the reserves to pay for “consultants,” and they’ve immediately mothballed Sentebale’s Children’s Center in Lesotho AND closed Sentebale’s London office. I thought Sophie had all of these big plans, I thought her expensive consultants were fundraising rainmakers? Why is Sentebale struggling so badly under Chandauka and Rawlinson’s leadership if they’ve gotten exactly what they wanted?

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, ITV.