Further evidence has emerged suggesting Royal patronages have no impact on charity income.

The latest research has looked at the impact of Prince Andrew’s patronages and found “no evidence” his official support for charities helped their revenue.

Prince Andrew’s charity involvement was looked at as it “created a unique opportunity” for analysis as he ended his 60 charity patronages at once amid the fallout from a widely criticised Newsnight interview he gave in 2019.

During this BBC interview with Emily Maitlis he sought to distance himself from his association with sex offender and American financier the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Following the interview the Royal released a statement saying: “It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organisations and charities that I am proud to support.

“Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission.

“I continue to unequivocally regret my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein.”

The research has been carried out by Giving Evidence and compared changes in revenue between charities Andrew worked with and other relevant charities.

“We find no evidence that Prince Andrew’s patronage of charities helped the charities in terms of revenue: there was no discernible decline in their revenue when his patronage ended,” found the research.

“When Prince Andrew’s patronage ended, about half of his patronee charities saw their revenue rise and about half of them saw revenue fall.”

It concludes that “our analysis implies that charities which want revenue may be wasting their time in seeking, securing and/or servicing a Royal patron”.

“Charities may gain other value from Royal patrons, such as reputation: there is no reliable dataset about that so we cannot comment on that,” it adds.

Previous evidence

This conclusion supports previous research by Giving Evidence published five years ago that also found no evidence that Royal patronages can increase voluntary sector revenue.

It also found a lack of support from Royals linked to good causes. Among three in four charities with such a patronage in place, their Royal patrons failed to attend any public engagements with them.

“Charities often seem to think that a Royal patron will visit them or enable events at palaces which they can use to attract press coverage or donors,” said Giving Evidence at the time.

“In fact, most UK charities with Royal patrons did not get a single public engagement with their Royal patron last year.”

Giving Evidence has made clear that it “takes no view for or against the Royal family in general”.

Instead, it is “interested in the effectiveness of charitable giving and charitable activity. We provide empirical research to enable evidence-based decisions. All of our work seeks to move beyond anecdote, and to look analytically and empirically at the relevant data”.

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