Martin Lewis Charity Fund Update 2024: What happened to my pledge to give £10m? (Spoiler: it's now £20m+)

A virtuous spiral – the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute

In recent years, with the exception of my Covid Poverty Fund, I've focused on long-standing projects, the biggest being the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute (MMHPI) charity I founded in 2016 and still chair (alongside an increasingly impressive group of trustees). I have added £425,000 since the last blog, bringing the total to £4.3m.

The full-time team of 19 has massively outperformed, changing behaviours, actions and policy of the Government, regulators and individual firms.

To give you a flavour, that includes a policy, now widely taken up, to get firms to allow customers to block gambling on debit/credit cards, debt breathing space for those in NHS crisis care, and working to embed debt help in mental health counselling (see a full MMHPI impact report) as the two are often rigidly interlinked; help one, you help the other.

Yet as this is about charity funding, I thought some may be interested in a virtuous circle... when I set up MMHPI, I guaranteed core funding for the first five years (and have extended that since). So unlike many new charities, which have to focus on fundraising and survival, we had a laser-like focus on work and impact.

That clarity meant MMHPI performed exceptionally, and because grant-giving and large donors saw it was efficient, focused, financially stable and delivering, they started to offer us funds, usually unbidden, to do more research. So without us ever seriously resourcing fundraising, we were soon bringing extra money in.

Soon the rep was so strong, we were able to set up an audit arm, to go into big firms and audit how accessible they are for those with mental health, which both gets them to improve behaviour and, as we charge them, raises funds for core research.

This virtuous circle has continued, results begetting funding begetting results. It's only in the last couple of years we've finally plumped for a dedicated fundraising member of staff, just one (and we don't target raising money from the public), and this year the income will be over £1m, meaning wonderfully my core funding is now less than 50%.

Where the money has gone so far... the big projects

1. The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute: £4.3M. I set up the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute (MMHPI) charity in 2016 and still chair its impressive board of trustees.
   
   Its core job is to research and advocate non-partisan practical policy change at government, regulators and companies to break the toxic link between mental health issues and debt. (We need those with lived experience to help hone policies. Please do consider volunteering here.)
   
   
2. The 'Martin Lewis Coronavirus Poverty Fund': £3.4m (£2.1m from me, £1.3m raised from others). In March 2020, my aims were simple...
   
   - To provide urgent relief to those struggling due to the pandemic.
   - To use my profile to bring in other donations (started before the official fundraising scheme was in place).
   - To do this via small charities, in order to help them survive too – including food banks, domestic abuse charities, cancer groups and more.
   
   At the final tally, I'd put £2.1m in and, wonderfully, after asking others with deep pockets to join, they added £1.3m, all of which meant 415 small charities received an average of £8,000 each at speed.
   
   For full details, including a breakdown of where the money went and how we decided, see my Covid poverty fund – where the money went blog.
   
   NB: While the external donations technically went to my charity fund, so they could be paid out, I haven't included them in the fund total at the blog's start.
   
   
3. Financial education in schools (including textbook): £1.8m. Financial education has long been a campaigning priority for me. I worked with the Young Money charity (Pfeg as it was then) in our successful campaign to get financial education on the English national curriculum in 2014. So the charity seemed a natural partner, and I've funded a number of projects since...
    
   - Funding My Money Week 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 of them to all English state schools (100 per school). Click for a free PDF download.
   - Jointly with the UK's official Money and Pensions Service (it agreed to go halves with me on the additional costs to do further textbooks) for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with each of us putting in £162,000.
   - To go with the textbook, funding a new teachers' digital e-learning pack to help teachers learn to teach it.
   - As noted above, I've also this year funded the charity to turn the children's financial education book into an adult learning textbook too.
   
   
4. Citizens Advice UK: £2m. Two £1m donations in 2012 and 2015 split across UK nations in proportion to population. I did this partly as I love Citizens Advice's voluntary ethos, but also to expose that debt-counselling funding had been cut by the Government in the recession.
   
   With the second donation, I was delighted they used the money in England to set up the Martin Lewis Citizens Advice Fund (its choice of name, not mine), giving local branches innovation grants to develop new digital and other ways to reach and help more people – which hopefully has paid dividends during the pandemic.
   
   
5. Trussell Trust: £650,000. The bulk of this money was for the Trussell Trust to first pilot, then in 2015 roll out, putting financial triage in food banks (see this Trussell Trust release). Part of the idea was to see if the concept worked so that the food banks could then engage councils and other community stakeholders to do it everywhere. It did work.
   
   Then for Christmas 2022, I also funded a straight £50,000 donation towards food poverty, in light of the terrible cost of living crisis.
   
   
6. The MSE Charity: £410,000. This is the total of my personal donation(s) to the MSE Charity since 2012. I set the charity up in 2007 to give grants to small charities working in consumer education or financial empowerment.
   
   This money is separate from MSE's (ie, my) donations before 2012 and MSE's (ie, Moneysupermarket Group's) donations since. In total, they add up to a further £1.15m (not included in my charity fund totals at the top of the blog, as it's from a different source).
   
   
7. Grief Encounter (helpline): £206,000. Grief Encounter provides grief counselling and help for children who have lost a parent (or sibling). While I normally focus on charities within my expertise, as those who have heard/seen my 2018 Radio 5 Live interview will know, this is something that resonates with me.
   
   I was already a patron of the charity when a couple of years ago they mentioned the idea of a helpline so children who were struggling had someone they could call. It struck a chord. I wished I'd had such a service, so I agreed to fund setting it up and running a year.
   
   As that year ended, Covid hit, demand went up, but funding opportunities elsewhere disappeared, so I agreed to fund a second year to keep it going.
   
   
8. The mortgage prisoners campaign: £60,000. To write now three LSE mortgage prisoners reports, to provide policy solutions to help the 200,000 people unjustly, desperately and life-debilitatingly trapped in closed-book mortgages due to the financial crash. The last report was published in February 2023 and sent to the Government. We continue to push for justice for these people whose lives have been devastated, made even worse in the last year by the spike in interest rates.
   
   
9. This one's a cheat. £3m to set up Citizens Advice Scams Action (not my money). In 2018, I started a campaigning lawsuit against Facebook for defamation after it kept publishing huge numbers of scam ads with my name and image in. In 2019, I dropped the case, and as part of the settlement it agreed to donate £3m to set up a new anti-scam wing of Citizens Advice, and launch a scam ad reporting tool unique to the UK. For more, see Martin Lewis in possibly record settlement with Facebook.
   
   Two years ago, I wrote: "I'm delighted this year that we also succeeded in persuading/pushing the Government to change its mind and include scam ads in the Online Safety Bill." Finally that bill is now in place, though sadly Ofcom's regulatory timetable indicates it'll probably be at least 18 months before we see any meaningful change on it – meanwhile, scam ads on Facebook and elsewhere with me and others in are still a daily, debilitating scourge.
   
   NB: For clarity, this Facebook money isn't included in my fund total at the top.