Martin Lewis: My coronavirus fund – £3.4m donated to 415 charities – how we selected, who got it, and some thanks

When I originally planned, then announced my Coronavirus Poverty Fund, I had a threefold aim:

1. To get help to where it was needed at speed. This, of course, was the paramount goal. I'd already started organising the fund before the official national charity drive launched. That's not really surprising, as due to my work, I get huge, direct, immediate feedback on the way the wind's blowing, and so could smell the financial panic and poverty hitting across the country. There was a one-week window for applications, and the first payments were made four days after that.
   
   
2. To support charities themselves. I'm already involved with a wide range of charities, so it was obvious many small charities would face an existential crisis – with access to funding severed. That's why I imposed a cap on both the size of the organisation and the grant itself. This meant we could spider the money out to keep as many crucial local organisations running as possible.
   
   
3. To make a public statement to encourage other high net worths to give. I'd ummed and ahhed about whether this was appropriate, but went for it, and included this call in my initial announcement, with an offer to provide the admin to help.
   
   At first, I said I'd put £1 million in, then £1.1 million came in from a range of brilliant donors, both individuals and corporates. So, in my somewhat obsessive way, I decided to make it a nice round number and add another £900,000.
   
   This round-number plan was, wonderfully, thwarted by another £420,000 coming in. In total, there's £1,320,000 that's come in from other sources. I've donated £1.9 million, which the mathematicians among you may realise leaves a shortfall of around £200,000. We're awaiting confirmation on another £100,000 donation, and I am covering any gaps.
   
   Many of the other donors were impressed by the admin process we'd set up to shortlist and process applications, and get money out at speed. That however isn't down to me – all my time during this crisis has been spent delivering help information, which I felt was where I could add the most value. So I knew I needed a serious admin structure to organise this, and to do that, I hastily recruited a team.
   
   It was led by Archna Luthra, who in the past worked with me for 10 years at MoneySavingExpert.com, so is someone I know and trust, and has similar values (she was effectively the proxy for me in running the project), and charity consultant Jonathan Cook. Between them, they put the system together.

After my initial blog and the coverage it got, I was blown away at receiving nearly 7,000 applications in seven days, requesting £74 million.

Sadly though, even after I'd increased my donation, and others had put in too, that left us only being able to fund about 5% of the applications received. Simply picking who to give the money to was a Herculean and intimidating task.

So I'm so grateful to the brilliant cast of 20 volunteer assessors – most of whom had substantial third sector experience themselves – that shouldered this responsibility. They worked with Archna and Jonathan, and freely and movingly, gave weeks of time to heavily filter applications.

Of course, it is with regret that we couldn't fund most of the applications we received. I want to make it very plain though, to those who didn't get money (who should all now have received my apology – and details of other places to apply for funding. If you haven't, do check your spam folder) that doesn't mean your organisation isn't worthy.

Where the money went

The thank yous