Martin Lewis: What happened to my pledge to give £10m to charity in 2012…?

First, the financials.

• The total that's gone to charity funds, including Gift Aid, is £11m.
• £2m of this was direct funding to Citizens Advice.
• £9m was put into a Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) fund. This is a bit like a charity bank account. I control the money, but can only use it to make donations to registered charities (you can do a similar charity account from just £10/month – one reason I did it this way was to publicise that).
• Of that £9m, so far nearly £4m has gone to specific charities (detailed below). Even after giving £4m to charities, fantastically there's still just under £14m left in the CAF fund. If you think that doesn't add up, you're right. It's because the investments I had a large chunk of the charity money in fortunately did well. Though I've now moved it to safer shores.

You'll be unsurprised to hear I don't intend to splurge it. I only tend to do major donations, only to projects I'm actively engaged in, rather than just writing a cheque, and I like to do research and planning to ensure maximum impact. So I will keep disbursing the money gradually, as and when appropriate.

The four major projects so far

1. Money and Mental Health Policy Institute: £1.4m (£800,000 further pledged until 2020). I set up the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute (MMHPI) in 2016 and currently chair the trustees. Its core job is research and advocating non-partisan policy-change to break the toxic link between mental health issues and debt.
   
   The donation funds eight full-time members of staff – who are all passionate about the subject and brilliant at what they do. The team's impact has already shifted the way mental health is dealt with in financial and consumer sectors.
   
   There's a full list of what MMHPI has done so far but successes include the Government agreeing to extend its Breathing Space debt respite scheme to those in NHS crisis mental health care, so they won't have to deal with letters, calls or charges on their debts. It's also seen the PM pledge to end GP charges for the debt and mental health evidence form (we're still working to hold her to account on this).
   
   Companies have changed behaviour too – Barclays, Monzo & Starling have launched tools to help people control gambling based on our research. We've also produced nine best practice guides for banks, telecoms firms, social landlords and others, to provide better support for those with mental health problems.
   
   And our research also led to regulator the Financial Conduct Authority doing a U-turn on its definition of "vulnerability", ensuring those with mental health problems won't lose out. 
   
   My full-funding pledge runs out in 2020, at which point I want to gradually reduce my donations, not out of a lack of generosity, but as a good charity should, to an extent, be able to financially wipe its own bottom and generate other income. I always wanted MMHPI to be (and it already is) far more than just a 'Martin Lewis' vehicle. 
   
   
2. Financial education in schools (incl textbook): £1,030,000. Financial education has long been a campaigning priority for me. I worked with the Young Money charity (PFEG as was) in our successful campaign to get financial education on the English national curriculum in 2014. So the charity seemed a natural partner, we've done two projects: 
   
   - Funding the My Money Week project for three years from 2016 to 2018, so children in all UK schools get access to free resources and education on managing money.  
   - Funding and developing the first curriculum-mapped financial education textbook, and sending 340,000 to all English state schools (100 per school). Click for a free PDF download.
   
   
3. Citizens Advice UK: £2m. Two £1m donations in 2012 and 2015 split across the UK nations in proportion to their population. I did this partly as I love Citizens Advice's voluntary ethos and great work; but also to expose that debt-counselling funding had been cut by the Govt in the recession.
   
   With the second donation, I was delighted that the England & Wales Citizens Advice set up the Martin Lewis Citizens Advice fund (its choice of name, not mine), giving local bureaux innovation grants to develop new ways to reach and help more people.
   
   
4. Trussell Trust financial triage: £600,000. The money was for The Trussell Trust  to pilot, then, in 2015, roll out putting financial triage in foodbanks (see Trussell Trust release). Part of the idea was to show the concept works so that the foodbanks could then engage councils and other community stakeholders to do it everywhere. 

Smaller donations, in brief