Cancer charity gets €2.5m windfall from mystery donor

It is the kind of Lotto-size windfall struggling Irish charities usually only dream about.

Yesterday, the Irish Cancer Society confirmed that it received a one-off €2.5m bequest from a mystery donor last year. As a condition of the bequest, the identity of the deceased donor will not be disclosed.

The charity’s communications manager, Gráinne O’Rourke, said it was the single highest bequest the charity ever received.

“The bequest became known to us through a professional institution and our dealings about the matter were with that institution.

“We were not advised of the donor having any connection to the society, or if they died of cancer, and as it was a condition of the bequest that details of the donor were to remain private, their specific details were not disclosed to us.”

Asked how the €2.5m was spent, she said: “€1m was used to fund the society’s grant to the State to support the roll-out of bowel screening. The balance was used to signific-antly increase our spend on research in 2011 — the total spend was €3.4m.”

So far this year, more than 100 bequests have been received, with the majority under €10,000. “Five individual bequests of between €100,000 and €200,000 each have been received.”

The €2.5m donation allowed the society — the largest voluntary funder of cancer research in Ireland — to increase its revenues by 21.5% last year from €17.5m to €21.2m.

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Excluding the donation, the society managed to buck the recessionary trend by increasing revenues by 7%.

The figures show its ann-ual Daffodil Day gross income rose from €3.2m to €3.3m. However, an increased spend on the day from €513,000 to €902,000 resulted in net income from the event falling from €2.7m to €2.4m.

The organisation’s annual accounts state: “The success of the year would not have been possible without two notable income streams — the Shave or Dye campaign run by Today FM which raised €1.3m and the generosity of some key donors making contributions towards the development of our Daffodil centres. Other campaigns which increased income in 2011 were Movember, corporate sponsorship and our shops’ performance.”

Ms O’Rourke said: “We are anticipating that 2012 will show similar fantastic support. This is imperative for us to deliver our services to cancer patients, their families and friends, particularly given reduced Government support in these areas. It also allows us to continue our investment programme into much needed cancer research in Ireland.”