DOWNING COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Registered charity 1137455 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · Wikidata: Q86020371 · also known as DOWNING COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

TO FURTHER PUBLIC GOOD BY PROMOTING LEARNING, STUDY AND TEACHING IN A COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Objects

ONE PERPETUAL COLLEGE FOR STUDENTS IN LAW, PHYSIC, AND OTHER USEFUL ARTS AND LEARNING.

Area of benefit: CAMBRIDGESHIRE

The charity’s charitable objects and area of benefit, quoted from its governing document as held on the Charity Commission register.

Causes: Education/training · website · Get email alerts

Registered contact address: Cambridge, East of England, England (from the postcode on the register)

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that the College reported a total surplus of £5.7 million for the year ended 30 June 2025, although the unrestricted operations showed a loss of £466 thousand. The College's free reserves were negative £7.9 million, a position the Governing Body considers not problematic due to access to liquidity sources including loan finance and unrestricted investment assets. The College continues to face financial pressures from an operating deficit in education costs and ongoing building refurbishments.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by PEM Audit Limited. Discloses 3 of 6 completeness components.

Policies the charity declares

In its annual return the charity told the Commission that it has the policies listed below. This is self-declared: it is not verified by the Commission or by this site, and it is not evidence of how a policy works in practice.

• Bullying and harassment policy and procedures
• Campaigns and political activity policy and procedures
• Complaints handling
• Complaints policy and procedures
• Conflicting interests
• Engaging external speakers at charity events policy and procedures
• Financial reserves policy and procedures
• Internal charity financial controls policy and procedures
• Internal risk management policy and procedures
• Investing charity funds policy and procedures
• Investment
• Paying staff
• Risk management
• Safeguarding policy and procedures
• Safeguarding vulnerable beneficiaries
• Serious incident reporting policy and procedures
• Social media policy and procedures
• Trustee conflicts of interest policy and procedures
• Trustee expenses policy and procedures

From the charity’s annual return (Part A, self-declared)

Answers and figures the charity gave in Part A of its annual return to the Charity Commission. They are self-declared: not verified by the Commission or by this site. Only positive answers and figures are listed; items not listed are simply not shown.

Source: this charity’s annual returns on the Charity Commission register.

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Professor Graham Virgo — Master (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Public profiles (found on the charity’s own website): facebook (8,873 followers) · instagram (8,342 followers)

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 30/06/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~0.0 months of spending — in the bottom quarter for charities its size (median 4.6 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 7.9% of total income — above the median for charities its size (3.7%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• PROF GRAHAM JOHN VIRGOchair
• DR DINO KADICH
• DR RACHEL COOMBES
• DR REBECCA FREUND
• DR SARAH KENNEDY
• Dr ALICE SOWTON
• Dr BRIGITTE STEGER
• Dr Charlotte Christiane Hammer
• Dr DAVID ROBERT PRATT
• Dr David Solomon Halpern CBE
• Dr EWAN JONES
• Dr Emma Louise Hazelwood
• Dr Francesco Muschitiello
• Dr Frisbee Sheffield
• Dr Hamish Anthony Symington
• Dr JIE LI
• Dr John William Roger Morgan
• Dr KAMRAN YUNUS
• Dr MARTA MORGADO CORREIA
• Dr Maria Elena Martinez-Acacio Alonso
• Dr Maria Vera Morales
• Dr Maria-Andreea Filip
• Dr Michael Crisp
• Dr NATALIA MORA-SITJA
• Dr Neda Farahi
• Dr SOPHIA DEMOULINI
• Dr STEFANIA FIORENTINO · trustee of 1 other charity
• Dr TIM BURTON
• Dr YANG LI
• James Christopher McCaffrey
• Joanne Finnie Jones
• Michael Ashby
• PROF AMY LOUISE MILTON
• PROF CHRISTOPHER ALLIM HANIFF
• PROF DAVID JOHN WALES
• PROF IAN GARETH ROBERTS
• PROF JOSEPH WEBSTER
• PROF MONICA MORENO FIGUEROA
• PROF NICK RAWLINSON
• PROF WILLIAM O'NEILL

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: Cambridgeshire

Income and spending

Common questions

Known funders

Grants to this charity found in funders’ own accounts filings.

Grants marked “Unverified read” were flagged by automated checks as possibly misread from the funder’s filed accounts. They are listed, but left out of the totals, counts and funder relationships this site computes.

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with JESUS COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

• JESUS COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE income £31.1m
• CLARE COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE income £16.0m
• CHURCHILL COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE income £28.6m
• THE MASTER FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE income £22.9m
• ST JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE income £58.7m
• SELWYN COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE income £15.1m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.