Trinity College Dublin raised €235m in philanthropic donations over the past seven years
Gordon Deegan
Trinity College Dublin has raised €235 million in philanthropic donations over the past seven years.
That is according to newly released board minutes of a TCD board meeting where TCD Chief Advancement Officer, Kate Bond, said that the TCD Gift Acceptance Committee carefully deliberates all key issues “in a nuanced manner” when asked about the role of the committee in scrutinising donors.
During a presentation on an overview of Trinity Development & Alumni (TDA) at TCD’s December board meeting, the minutes record that Ms Bond highlighted that benchmarking indicated that TCD had the second largest average gift size from alumni giving from its benchmark of peer institutions.
Ms Bond also highlighted that major gifts of over €1 million came from a small but diverse group of donors with different motivations and interests as well as there being a broad base of supporters making smaller donations.
A spokeswoman for TCD said today that €81.8 million in philanthropic funds has been raised over the past two years.
Philanthropic donations include €4 million for 2024 and 2021 from Ryanair for the Ryanair Sustainable Aviation Research Centre and a $12.5m to support Cerebral Palsy research at Trinity, UCC and RCSI from the Cerebral Palsy Foundation in 2023.
The donations also include in 2018 a €25 million donation for the Martin Naughton E3 Learning Foundry from the Naughton Family.
New accounts show that the firm commercialising the TCD brand last year made a donation of €1.4 million to the Trinity Development & Alumni (TDA).
New accounts for Trinity Brand Commercial Services Limited to the end of last September show that it recorded a pre-donation profit of €784,621 “driven by increased commercial activity and positive impact of visitor numbers on the TCD campus”.
Revenues at Trinity Brand Commercial Services Ltd last year increased by 34 per cent from €7.7 million to €10.3 million.
The principal activity of the company is the commercialisation of the Trinity College Dublin brand and intellectual property.
The revenues were mainly made up of €7.6 million in management services and €2.28 million in sales of goods and ticket sales.
A spokeswoman for TCD said today that the €2.28 million “relates to Trinity Trails campus tours plus sales of Trinity branded merchandise through non-retail channels. These tours largely employ Trinity students as guides”.
The spokeswoman said that as with all commercial income, “these funds are used to further Trinity’s academic mission”.
Numbers employed by the company last year increased from 25 to 30 that included 13 employed in Trinity Trails. Staff costs increased from €1.72 million to €1.99 million.
