Charitable Donations That Count Towards Cayman PR Points: The CI$2,000 Floor and the Annual Cap

Personal donations earn Cayman permanent-residence points at a rate of 1.5 points per year, for each year in which the applicant gives at least CI$2,000 to community-minded activities, for up to eight years. That is the whole of the rule in Schedule 2 of the Immigration Regulations (2025 Revision), Factor 5, Category II, item (g), on page 106 of the Gazette. Everything else on this page follows from those three numbers: the CI$2,000 annual floor, the 1.5-point annual rate, and the eight-year window that shares a 20-point cap with every other community activity.

Because the floor is annual, a donation made in a single year counts once, however large it is. Because the cap is shared, donations compete for the same 20 points as volunteering, mentoring and sponsorship. And because the window is eight years long, a year that passes without a qualifying donation is a year of points that cannot be recovered. This spoke of the complete points guide sets out how the rule works, how it interacts with the rest of Factor 5, and what evidence Schedule 2 asks for.

The rule in the Gazette's words

Factor 5 is titled "Community Minded/Integration into the Caymanian Community" and carries a maximum of 20 points. It lists two categories of activity. Category I awards two points for each year the applicant has provided a minimum of 35 hours of service annually, for up to eight years, across three activities: mentoring Caymanians outside work, personal sponsorship of a Caymanian's tertiary training of at least CI$3,500 per year, and offender rehabilitation. Category II awards one and one-half points for each year, on the same 35-hour and eight-year terms, across eight activities. Item (g) of Category II reads:

Personal donations to community minded activities of a minimum of CI$2,000 per annum

The 35-hour wording sits in the introduction to Category II and reads naturally for the seven activities that involve time. A donation is measured in dollars, and the Gazette gives it its own floor of CI$2,000. The calculator on this site treats the dollar floor as the gate for item (g) and the hours floor as the gate for items (a) to (f) and (h). The Board decides each application on its evidence; the Schedule sets the floor and says nothing about amounts above it.

What "per annum" does to a lump sum

The floor is expressed per year. A single gift of CI$16,000 in one year meets the floor for that year and earns 1.5 points. The same CI$16,000 given as CI$2,000 in each of eight years meets the floor in eight years and earns 12 points. The Schedule does not permit a large gift to be spread across years for scoring purposes, and it does not award more than 1.5 points for a year in which more than CI$2,000 was given.

This is why the annual-cap tracker in the PR points calculator exists. It records each year's donation total, marks the years that clear CI$2,000, and shows how many Category II years remain inside the eight-year window before the planned application date. The arithmetic is simple; the difficulty is that it has to be done years before the form is filed, at a time when most people are not thinking about the application at all.

The shared 20-point cap

Donations are one of eleven activities that all draw on a single 20-point maximum. The cap binds in two ways.

First, within a year, several activities can each earn their rate. A year with CI$2,000 in donations (1.5), 35 hours at a service club (1.5) and 35 hours mentoring a Caymanian outside work (2.0) earns 5 points. Second, across years, the total is cut at 20. Eight years of donations alone reach 12 points; eight years of donations plus eight years of service-club volunteering would compute to 24 and be capped at 20. An applicant who already has strong volunteering history may find that donations add little, while an applicant with no time to volunteer may find that donations are the only Category II line reachable.

The table below shows how quickly the cap arrives for a few combinations, each sustained for the number of years shown inside the eight-year window.

Activities each year	Points per year	Years to reach 20
Donations only (Category II)	1.5	Not reached; 12 after eight years
Donations plus one 35-hour Category II activity	3.0	7 years (21, capped at 20)
Donations plus one 35-hour Category I activity	3.5	6 years (21, capped at 20)
Donations plus two Category II activities	4.5	5 years (22.5, capped at 20)

The combinations are illustrations of the Schedule's arithmetic, not suggestions. Which activities are realistic depends on the applicant's hours, income and interests.

Which recipients count

Schedule 2 says "community minded activities" and no more. It does not publish a list of approved charities, does not require registration under the Non-Profit Organisations Act as a condition of scoring, and does not exclude churches, schools, sports bodies or cultural foundations. The Board reads the evidence in front of it. The only stated test is the letter standard in Explanation 3, quoted below: a letter from the head of the organisation or an executive board member setting out the contribution. An organisation that can issue such a letter is, for scoring purposes, an organisation the Board can assess.

Three kinds of payment sit at the edge of the wording and are worth thinking about carefully before relying on them:

• Gifts to a church the applicant attends. Local church programmes are a Category II activity in their own right (item (f)), scored on 35 hours of participation. A financial gift to the same church would be scored, if at all, under item (g) as a donation. Whether tithing to one's own congregation is a donation to a "community minded activity" is a question the Schedule does not answer. Explanation 3 asks the letter to give the details of the contribution, which for a church gift means what the funds supported.
• Sponsorship with a benefit in return. Paying for a table at a gala, a team's kit that carries the applicant's business name, or a raffle prize has a commercial element. Some of the payment may still be a gift, but the letter from the organisation is what will make that distinction visible.
• Gifts to individuals. Paying a Caymanian student's fees is a different line, Category I item (b), with its own CI$3,500 floor and a 2-point rate. Cash help to a family or a colleague is not a community-minded activity in the Schedule's sense and has no evidential trail.

The community service spoke covers the time-based activities and the documentation Schedule 2 expects from organisations; the same letter standard applies to donations.

Evidence: what the letter has to say

Explanation 3 to Factor 5 sets the evidence rule for every activity in the factor:

Letters confirming an applicant's participation or contribution in any of the activities referred to in this factor will only be accepted from the head of the organisation or an executive member of the Board and the Caymanian beneficiary in cases of training or mentoring and must provide the required details of those activities and the amount of time the applicant was involved.

For a donation, the "required details" are the amounts and dates of the gifts and what they supported. A letter signed by a volunteer coordinator or an administrator does not satisfy the signatory rule; the head of the organisation or a board member has to sign. A receipt or a bank record on its own is evidence of payment but not the letter the Schedule describes. The signatory has to be an officer in post, and officers change over an eight-year window; the letter for a given year can only be signed by whoever holds the office when it is requested.

A workable file for each year contains:

1. the letter from the head of the organisation or a board member, dated, naming the applicant, stating the amount received and the period it covers;
2. bank or card statements showing the payments leaving the applicant's account;
3. where the gift was in kind, the organisation's valuation and a description, since the Schedule speaks of "personal donations" without limiting them to cash but the Board will need a CI$ figure.

The evidence vault in Cayman Costs Plus stores these documents by year and by activity, so that when the application is assembled the file for 2028 is already next to the file for 2027. Nothing in the vault is shared with WORC or the Board; the applicant prints or exports what is needed.

Common questions the Schedule does answer

Does a donation of CI$1,999 count for anything?

No. The floor is a minimum of CI$2,000 per annum. Below it, the year scores zero under item (g).

Do several small gifts add up?

The floor is a total for the year, so gifts to more than one organisation can be added, provided each is evidenced by its own letter. The Schedule does not say the CI$2,000 has to go to a single recipient.

Which years count?

The window is "up to eight years". Read alongside the eight-year residence requirement in section 37(1) of the Immigration (Transition) Act, this means the years of residence leading up to the application. An applicant who arrived in 2021 and plans to file in 2029 has the years 2021 to 2028 available.

Does a spouse's donation count for the applicant?

The Schedule says "personal donations". The Schedule does not say how a gift from a joint account is attributed, and a letter naming both spouses leaves the attribution to the Board.

Is there a tax receipt?

The Cayman Islands have no income tax, so there is no tax deduction and no tax receipt. The letter is the document.

Where donations sit in the whole picture

Twelve points from eight years of donations is a material share of the 110 needed, but it is one line among nine factors. The complete guide shows the full assessment; the History and Culture test carries up to 20 points that depend on study rather than money; and the fees and timeline spoke sets out the government charges that fall due when the application is finally filed. For a reader several years out, the calculator's gap analysis puts all three side by side, with the CI$2,000 floor, the 35-hour floor and the 20-point cap applied year by year to the planned application date.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. The values are read from Schedule 2 of the Immigration Regulations (2025 Revision), pages 105 and 106, as reviewed on 30 August 2026. Where the Schedule is silent, this page says so rather than filling the gap; a licensed Cayman Islands immigration attorney can advise on how the Board has treated a particular kind of gift.