RICHARD EDEN: William and Kate give Harry and Meghan a lesson in charity

Their respective new years could scarcely have begun in more starkly contrasting manner.

In the UK, the Princess of Wales has been welcomed at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, both by patients and by those staff who successfully treated Catherine for cancer.

Over in California, on the other hand, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been bruisingly derided as “disaster tourists” after handing out food to Los Angeles fire victims.

Now, I can disclose, the ever-expanding gulf between the two couples has been unsparingly highlighted by the fortunes of their respective foundations.

The Earthshot Prize – established by Prince William in 2019 to devise solutions to “some of the world’s greatest environmental problems” – has just released its annual report showing that it is going gangbusters.

The uninitiated could be forgiven for missing this, given that Earthshot’s total income for the year was up only a relatively modest four per cent, at £23.5 million (AUD$46m).

But that overlooks the fact that no less than £8.6 million ($17m) of the £22.5 million ($44m) raised the previous year was a one-off donation from The Royal Foundation, set up by William and Harry in 2009 to further their various charitable ambitions.

There was no such donation for this year for the Earthshot, which in 2022 was hived off from The Royal Foundation to be administered as an entirely separate charity.

So its underlying income from donations increased by a whopping 68 per cent.

The founding partners gave £14.4 million ($28m).

But perhaps even more intriguing is the contribution made by The American Friends of The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales.

It more than doubled to £6.1 million ($12m), from £2.7 million ($5.3) the previous year.

To put that in perspective, Meghan and Harry raised a total of £4.67 million ($9m) from all sources for their Archewell Foundation.