The AIB Better Ireland Programme has donated over €21m to charities and community groups in Ireland.
In 2008 AIB significantly expanded the programme to include children with physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities and we invited our customers and local communities to have a say in who they wanted to support. AIB donated a total of €1.85 million to local deserving projects for children. AIB's 185 main branches each awarded €10,000 to local projects and recipients chosen by a public text vote from a shortlist of groups in their community.
A further enhancement to this programme included a donation of €1.4 million towards four innovative flagship projects which impacted and benefited over 950 children nationwide. For 2008, the chosen flagship projects were: Festina Lente, Bray; Limerick Youth Service; Ability West, Galway and St. Joseph's School for the Visually Impaired in Drumconrda, Dublin.
In 2009/2010, AIB broadened the Programme significantly to include all vulnerable children, who are socially disadvantaged and children with terminal or chronic illness.
In 2010 AIB gave €1.82m through 182 local branches to be shared among 546 local deserving children's projects. For the first time, the funding of €10,000 per branch was divided between three short listed projects chosen by the local communities. The winning projects for each branch were chosen by the local community through a public vote. (1st place - €5,000, 2nd place - €3,000 and 3rd place - €2,000). A fantastic total of 602,172 text and online votes where registered - almost double the amount of votes received during the 2008 Programme.