58 • The Sunday Times MagazineRich List 2022
APLeft: Stormzy is funding scholarships for
black students to Cambridge UniversityGreen initiatives have been popular in
the celebrity world for decades. Sting
launched the Rainforest Foundation with
his wife, Trudie Styler, in 1989. The wealth
of the former Police frontman is now valued
at £320 million after the sale of his back
catalogue to Universal Music Publishing
Group. More recently the band Coldplay
— whose combined fortune is £471 million
— have focused on climate change. The
band gifted £750,000 to ClientEarth, an
environmental charity, and £900,000
to the Ocean Cleanup in the past year.
Delevingne’s Initiative Earth aims to
lobby governments, repair damaged
ecosystems and educate via festivals,
conferences and courses. Other Rich
Listers with a lower public profile but
greater financial clout are also shifting the
green dial — among them Lisbet Rausing
and Peter Baldwin (part of the Rausing
dynasty, worth £9.49 billion) through
their Arcadia Fund; Alan Parker (worth
£2.8 billion) through his Oak Foundation;
and the Weston family (worth £13.5 billion)
through the Garfield Weston Foundation.
Green issues aside, overall more than
£2.4 billion was gifted by the 100 leading
philanthropists in this year’s Rich List.
Seven gave away more than £100 million
in the past year, 38 gifted more than
£10 million, while 95 were members of
the £1 million donors club. More than
£510 million has been given by Rich Listers
to offset the impacts of Covid-19 since
March 2020. In February Joanne Rowling
thanked her readers after sales of her book
The Ickabog raised millions for charities.
The Harry Potter author said it was “one
of the most meaningful experiences” of her
career. Beneficiaries of the fund included
the British Red Cross and the Disasters
Emergency Committee ■Y
oung black philanthropists
have claimed three of the
top dozen places in the
21st edition of the Giving
List. Lewis Hamilton, the
seven times Formula One world
champion, Mo Salah, the Liverpool
striker, and Stormzy, the rap star, all
feature prominently among our ranking
of the most generous billionaires and
millionaires in Britain.
Hamilton, who has largely kept his
philanthropy discreet to date, pledged
£20 million in the past year to his new
Mission 44 foundation, named after hisStormzy, Lewis Hamilton and
Mo Salah are among the top
philanthropists in the countryYOUNG,
GIFTING
AND BLACK
race number. The only black driver in
F1 history, Hamilton’s foundation aims
to support and empower young people
from under-represented groups and
reduce opportunity gaps in education
and employment.
Meanwhile, Salah donated
£2.4 million to the National Cancer
Institute in Cairo in 2019 after it was
severely damaged by a car bomb. The
star’s philanthropy is one of several
interventions in his homeland.
Last summer Stormzy extended
his black scholarship initiative at
Cambridge University. Launched in
2018, the Stormzy Scholarships helped
boost the number of black applicants
to the university by more than 50 per
cent, raising the black student
population above 200 for the first time.
In partnership with HSBC, there will be
a further 30 scholarships over the next
three years, worth £20,000 for each
year of a three or four-year degree.
The cost of the scheme will be at least
£1.8 million, half of which we have
ascribed to Stormzy as an example of
a young philanthropist leveraging their
influence to maximum effect.
Neil Heslop, the chief executive of
CAF, which partners The Sunday Times
in producing the Giving List, says: “It is
no accident that young change-makers
of colour are leveraging their positions
against the backdrop of Black Lives
Matter. It’s about the democratisation
of their influence through power.” n