The fine art of university fundraising in a new era

The Irish-American billionaire Chuck Feeney is thought to have donated over €500 million to the Irish third-level sector over the past decade. But the colleges also benefit from some home-grown philanthropy, writes Katherine Holmquist, education correspondent

There are easier tasks than attempting to find out who gives what to the Irish universities. By its nature, philanthropy can be secretive or bold. Many donors, who benefit from tax breaks, prefer to remain nameless. The colleges themselves can be cagey about who gives what.

That said, some of the captains of Irish industry are well known for their contribution to the colleges. Lochlann Quinn, chairman of AIB, funded the Quinn Business School at UCD. UCD and DCU also boast O'Reilly buildings, courtesy of Dr Tony O'Reilly. Dr Michael Smurfit funded the Smurfit School of Business at UCD.

Other heroes on the university giving circuit include Neil McCann of Fyffes and Michael Naughton of Glen Dimplex. Ben Dunne may not be generally known as an academic benefactor, and yet fund-raisers will tell you that he has been donating money for years.

The scale of corporate donations to colleges in this State still pales in comparison to the US, where philanthropic donations make up 25 per cent of university budgets.

In the Ivy League colleges annual philanthropy is equivalent to $30,000 per student, while at the London School of Economics, one of the best-endowed universities in Britain, the rate is $77 per student. In France and Germany, university funding is seen as a public responsibility, not an issue for private and corporate fund-raising.

From an Irish perspective having an O'Reilly or a Smurfit on the name plate also helps to bring in other donations. Networking amongst high-flying alumni can bring in much-needed cash and contacts. More Irish universities, such as DCU, are now looking to donations from individual graduates as well as large corporate contributions.

Patrick McDermott, chief executive of DCU Educational Trust, says that "in the past, people had an ATM approach to education - you go in, put in the study and get out your degree and then you never look back. Now we are trying to change this attitude and foster a life-long connection with the institution, for both the good of the institution and for the good of the wider community".

As the money from US billionaire philanthropist Chuck Feeney dries up, universities are realising that they cannot rely on big players forever. But it is fair to say that Feeney's funding vehicle, Atlantic Philanthropies, has already had a seismic impact on the university sector. UCC alone was awarded $40 million in 2001 and 2002 by Atlantic Philanthropies. In that same period, Maynooth was given $21 million, the University of Limerick benefited by nearly $18 million, the National College of Ireland by nearly $9 million.

Total funding to Irish third-level colleges is said to have exceeded €500 in the past decade. Small wonder that the red carpet was rolled out when the board of Atlantic travelled to Dublin recently. A meeting with the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, formed part of the itinerary. Despite his success, Feeney is a unassuming figure who shuns the limelight and lives modestly.

But the good times - courtesy of Atlantic - are drawing to a close. Earlier this year, Atlantic signalled a shift in its focus away from educational institutions towards programmes related to ageing, human rights and disadvantage.

For now, the money is still rolling in. This year, it has given $375,000 to DCU for the president's discretionary fund, $637,000 to St Patrick's College for a new programme addressing educational disadvantage and $460,000 to TCD for a programme aimed at supporting the families of children with learning difficulties.

For the future, the universities must accelerate their own fund-raising efforts to make good the loss of Atlantic.

Some are making progress. TCD's fund-raisers raised more than €16 million in 2001 (the last year for which the university published accounts).

When the University of Limerick Foundation held its board meeting at the international headquarters of Saatchi & Saatchi in New York last week, two new individual benefactors and a professorship were announced. Kevin Roberts, the head of Saatchi & Saatchi, was made a professor of sustainable enterprise to head up a joint research project between UL and the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Roberts will be on the UL campus for five days per year for the four-year duration of his appointment.

The same meeting heard that one board member, Paul Kimball, an independent US financier who lives in Paris, had given $500,000 to help build a new home for the Irish World Music Centre at UL, and that board member John Ryan, co-founder and chairman of Macrovision, which owns the rights to the software in Sky TV decoders, had pledged $1 million.

"This is a road that UL has been walking since 1989," said Tony Bretherton, executive director of the UL Foundation. "We are trying to be creative and go beyond what might be expected of us."