King's Fund

King's Fund

The King's Fund was established in 1897 as the Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund for London, created to raise money for voluntary hospitals. Today it operates under a royal charter granted in 2008, with HM King Charles III as its President since 1986. The Fund is not a grantmaker in the passive sense — it commands an investment portfolio whose returns underpin its ability to publish, convene, and shape England's health and care policy landscape. The endowment deploys across at least three asset classes: private equity, infrastructure, and real estate. The real estate holdings include 11–13 Cavendish Square in Marylebone — the Fund's headquarters — plus commercial space at 7–10 Dean's Mews and land in Old Basing, Hampshire. On the infrastructure side, the portfolio has a global footprint. The Fund's private-equity exposure is concentrated in the United Kingdom. Instead of operating as a pure grantmaking foundation, it runs a co-investment and partnership model with entities like the Nuffield Trust and The Health Foundation on research projects, while also maintaining corporate relationships — GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was a named partner for its GSK IMPACT Awards program. The leadership sits with CEO Sarah Woolnough and Chair of the Board of Trustees Rt Hon Professor Lord Kakkar. The Fund also runs a Corporate Partners and Supporters program, which functions as a professional network for businesses to engage in health-policy debate. This structure — blending an investment portfolio, a real-estate book, and a corporate-partnership network — sits alongside its core output of health-services research and policy advocacy. What distinguishes the King's Fund structurally is that it is not a family office, nor a typical private foundation with a spending-rule mandate. It is a royally chartered endowment that acts as a think-tank and convening body, using its own balance sheet — not just donated grant capital — to fund its operations and maintain independence. The investment function does not exist solely to generate returns for external distributions; it directly sustains the organization's permanent staff, London premises, and policy agenda.