Diana Memorial Fund Will Have Cause for Tough Judgment Calls

Tears for the death of the world’s favorite princess have dried, the great sea of flowers is a memory, but a growing pool of cash donated in the memory of Princess Diana has become an overwhelming reality.

Three months after Diana’s death, the money is still pouring in. It is creating a star-in-the-making among British charities but presents her survivors with an enormous organizational headache.

“We couldn’t have imagined how much would come in, and we still don’t know what the total will be,” said Vanessa Corringham at the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund. “At the start, we were getting thousands of letters a day, and now we are still receiving hundreds each week.”

With more than 140,000 donations received, nearly $60 million is on hand or en route, with plenty more on the way--but not a penny will be distributed before next spring. No decisions have been made on the nature of the fund or its eventual beneficiaries. Decisions will come slowly.

“It is so big, so important, so emotional that more than ever one has to demonstrate due diligence and complete transparency. We must be whiter than white,” Corringham said.

The fund will probably become an endowment, which will generate income for grants to groups that carry out good works. Certainly it will give to charities favored by the princess but perhaps to others as well. Such key decisions will be made only as the roster of fund overseers is gradually filled.

So far, there are only three trustees: Michael Gibbins, Diana’s private secretary; Anthony Julius, her lawyer; and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, one of her sisters.

The board will grow to about a dozen members when new appointments are announced at year’s end. All trustees will have been in some way close to the princess.

For now, the fund is being administered by Mishcon de Reya, Julius’ firm of lawyers, in a no-frills operation with low administrative costs. Corringham said that when a full-time staff is hired, it will include several people who had worked for the princess.

The current account shows about $22 million in individual and corporate donations, with $34 million en route from the first royalties for Elton John’s musical tribute “Candle in the Wind.” The British government will also chip in about $4 million in sales tax rebates from the John CD.

Much more--perhaps $50 million--will flow from “Candle,” and another seven-figure bonanza is expected from a Memorial Fund-sponsored commemorative CD--featuring Pavarotti to U2--that goes on sale in the United States next week.

Promising to share revenues with the fund in exchange for the use of Diana’s name on their products, several hundred companies are marketing goods from porcelain dolls to Christmas cards with the tacit approval of Diana’s heirs.

How much global licensing may produce is anybody’s guess, but already several dozen British companies have been told by Diana’s lawyers to put their overdue contribution checks in the mail, according to Corringham.

If the fund fulfills early predictions of $300 million in assets, and if it preserves capital and distributes its income as grants, it will rank in the top 15 of Britain’s 180,000 registered charities, according to Vicki Pulman at the Charities Aid Foundation.

Noblesse oblige, doing good works for charity, is a principal function of Britain’s royal family. After her divorce last year, though, Diana cut her patron’s role in more than 100 charities to a handful.

Thereafter, she was official patron for groups fighting leprosy, AIDS, cancer and homelessness. She also supported a London children’s hospital and the English National Ballet.

In addition, Diana emerged as a leading international advocate for the abolition of land mines in the months before her death and remained close to mainline charities such as the British Red Cross.

While the princess’ causes will benefit from the spontaneous donations triggered by her death in an Aug. 31 car crash in Paris, there will be many other outstretched hands.

Charity professionals who are closely watching to see how the fund develops do not envy its birth pains.

“I think I would have many sleepless nights,” said Eoin Redahan at Action Research, which funds medical research projects. “They are going to need good experts to advise them. And in the end, they will have to make decisions popular with some people and unpopular with others.”

Action Research uses 2,500 medical advisors to vet projects, forwarding those that seem worthwhile to panels of scientific experts, who then make recommendations to the group’s trustees, who finally decide which to support.

“It will be especially difficult to allocate the Diana fund money,” Redahan said. “On what basis do you decide, for example, whether to give money to a play group looking after children with a disability or to a doctor working to eliminate that disability?”

Michael Dickson, the director of London-based Whizz-Kidz, which provides wheelchairs and other support to disabled children, saw his agency bumped by the Diana fund as a major beneficiary of this spring’s London Marathon.

But Dickson, who has written a book on British charities, believes that organizers of the Diana fund deserve patience--and a measure of sympathy.

“They need time to get the structure sorted out and deserve a jolly good bit of peace and quiet,” Dickson said. “Getting the money was the easy bit. Now they have to give it away responsibly with the world’s press watching. Imagine yourself on a panel inundated by requests for money. Half the world will be at them within a year.”

To the beleaguered handful of fund workers, it seems that way already.

“Thousands of ideas flood in from everywhere to use Diana’s name to sponsor fund-raisers--tea parties in Ulan Bator, flower arranging in Bogota,” Corringham said.

Only one company, a British crystal maker, has signed a formal contract with the fund so far. Like the many others that have tacit approval to use Diana’s name, it passed trustees’ tests for good taste.

Those interested in donating to the memorial fund may do so by mailing a check or money order to: The Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund; c/o Fleet Bank; P.O. Box 30596; Hartford, CT 06150.