Funding Foundations

An invitation to establish a convent was one thing, but funds had to be forthcoming too. According to the rules of the Presentation Order the sisters couldn’t earn salaries for teaching so other ways had to be found to fund their convents and schools. 

Convents were financed through bequests, dowries, investments, donations and charity sermons. Dowries, a sum of money settled on a woman that would be paid upon her marriage, were vital to the survival of fledgling convents. Almost every woman who wanted to join the convent had to have a dowry. This money was invested and the convent operated off the interest generated. The minimum amount for a dowry was different in each convent but in the late eighteenth century, women joining George’s Hill convent in Dublin required a dowry of £500.

Some convents had a wealthy benefactor who gifted them money or property. About half of the convents established by the Presentation Order between 1775 and 1828 were funded by women. In some instances widows used their inheritance to establish a convent and then live alongside the nuns, sometimes choosing to become a nun themselves. This was the case in Doneraile, Co. Cork where Mary Ann Flynn (later Sr Joseph) was one of the founders of the convent.