Donations for Research

  • Donations of £100,000 or more should be accepted and routed through the Cambridge University Development and Alumni Relations (CUDAR) office.
  • Where donations (>£50k) are designated for specific research, they may legitimately be accepted as donations via the Development office but then treated for accounting purposes as research grant income.
  • Treating such donations as research income through the Grants Module benefits the University as these funds then also count towards the REF as it is only income recorded on the Grants Module that can be included in the REF.

Eligibility

For a donation to be set up as a research grant, the following criteria must be met:

  • the terms of a gift must reflect the fact that it is a donation (e.g. no IP rights to the donor)
  • the donor’s intention to make the donation for a specific research project or area must be clear at the outset and documented between the donor and the University
  • the research activity must meet the Frascati definition of research
  • the gift must be spend-down or, in rare instances if held as a trust fund, this must be a non-permanent endowment whereby spend is allowed against the principal
  • only expenditure against principal can be counted towards research income (spend against interest, where this applies, cannot be counted because interest is categorised as internally-generated income)

Philanthropic donations for unspecified research purposes should always be processed through donation accounts in the General Ledger as opposed to the Research Grants Module on CUFS.

Grant management

Once a donation is identified as a Donation for Research, Cambridge University Development and Alumni Relations Office (CUDAR) and the Department accepting the donation will need to liaise together to complete the Donations for Research Set-Up Form[LO1]. This will then provide the Research Operations Office with all the information required for the donation to be set on the Grants Module with lighter budgetary controls than standard research grants. This will give principle investigators/project leads the nomal flexibility they receive with other donations.

While the grant will be set up by the Research Operations Office the remainder of the work involved, from accepting and acknowledging receipt of the donation to requesting payment from the donor, will continue to be carried out by CUDAR.