MoneySavingExpert.com founder to give £10m to charity 1

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 1 Jun 2012

Martin Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, will donate £10m to charity following the sale of the consumer finance advice website.

MoneySavingExpert.com was today sold to MoneySupermarket.com for an upfront price tag of £60m, with an additional £27m to come over the next three years if key targets are met.

Alongside the financial announcement, founder Lewis declared that he will allocate £10m of his proceeds from the sale to charity, which he will initially park in a Charities Aid Foundation trust. Of that sum, £1m will immediately go to Citizens Advice.

In a comment piece about the sale of his site, Lewis (pictured) wrote: “As soon as the deal completes, I plan to donate £1m straight to Citizens Advice, which desperately needs it for debt advice as, shamefully, its public funding has been cut (as you can't talk about these deals before they're announced, I've not been able to speak to Citizens Advice yet).

The tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist said he will take his time in deciding future recipients. “There are so many good causes, so I want time to think about where the donations can do the most good, and not splurge them all at once,” he wrote.

Lewis will be able to benefit from this windfall in particular given the government's U-turn on the proposed tax relief cap on charitable donations yesterday.

Directory: Charities Aid Foundation

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Karl Wilding
Head of Policy, Research & Foresight
NCVO
1 Jun 2012

Well done Martin. Precisely the situation - and the reason - why the tax cap was so wrong and why we fought it so hard.

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