Developer makes $1 million donation
Howard Lake | 29 July 2007 | News
Irish property developer Garrett Kelleher has made a donation of $1m (‚€729,000) to the US-Ireland Alliance that will go towards an endowment to fund the Mitchell Scholarship Programme. The donation will be matched by the Irish Government.
The programme funds post-graduate scholars in the US to undertake study in Ireland and currently funds around 12 students a year. It was started in 2000 and is named after US Senator George Mitchell.
The US-Ireland Alliance, which seeks to foster relations between Ireland and the United States and the Irish Government will match whatever the Alliance raises, up to ‚€20 million over the next five years, to endow its George J. Mitchell Scholarship program.
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Alliance president Trina Vargo said that the Alliance seeks to raise ‚€40 million to ensure that the Mitchell Scholarship program is permanently funded, like the Rhodes Scholarship program, which sends future leaders to Oxford for study. The Mitchell Scholarship program was established in 1998 and has already sent more than 80 future American leaders to pursue graduate level study at universities throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Earlier in the year the Alliance raised nearly $5 million at couple of fundraising dinners in Dublin.
Million dollar commitments, to be paid over the next five years, have come from Pat and Teresa Mooney and Bernard and Moira McNamara.
The Mitchell Scholarship program is funded annually by the US Department of State and the US Congress, the Northern Ireland Department for Employment and Learning, BD (Becton Dickinson & Company), Bombardier Aerospace (NI) Foundation, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, the McDonnell Charitable Foundation, every university on the island of Ireland, and many others.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.