Prince William is reportedly responsible for the sharp increase in corporate donations to the East Anglia Air Ambulance.
The 34-year-old royal started working as a helicopter pilot for the Air Ambulance in July 2015, and new figures show the donations made to the charity-run service by businesses has rocketed in what is being called the ‘Prince William Effect’.
Figures obtained by the Daily Mail newspaper show that the amount of money coming from business donations since the royal started working for the charity rose from £55,101 in 2015, to a whopping £163,082 in 2016.
However, despite the increase in business revenue, figures in the same report show that public funding to the service has dropped by six percent.
Prince William – who shares Prince George, three, and Princess Charlotte, 20 months, with his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge – and his colleagues reportedly carried out 2,046 missions from June 2015 to July 2016, and helped around 1,377 patients across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire.
Meanwhile, it was recently reported that Prince William would be giving up his job with the Air Ambulance service in order to become a full-time royal, but it has been suggested he won’t use his free time to take on more royal duties than his father, 68-year-old Prince Charles, as he doesn’t want to appear to be "elbowing his father out of the way".
A friend of Prince William said: "Some people may question why William still won’t do as much as Princess Anne but he is dead set on not queering his father’s pitch.
"He sees that Charles will probably be in his seventies before he becomes king and he doesn’t want to be seen as elbowing his father out the way."
Instead, sources claim the royal will use his time to focus on other issues that matter to him, such as tackling homelessness and raising awareness about mental health issues.
Prince William responsible for increase in Air Ambulance donations
