Royal Conservatory of Music

About Royal Conservatory of Music:

Founded in 1886, the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) is one of the largest musical education institutions in the world. The Royal Conservatory’s mission is to develop human potential through leadership in music and the arts. The conservatory’s programs are education, maintaining a musical standard through examinations, performances at its home in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning, and providing professional development to music educators.

The Royal Conservatory of Music runs the RCM certificate program, a comprehensive and effectively sequenced system of study of music and one of the top music education systems in Canada. The Conservatory reports that every year, more than 30,000 teachers and 500,000 students participate in the curriculum. The examination component of the certificate program sees 100,000 students participate in exams across more than 300 communities in North America.

The Royal Conservatory of Music presents and produces a wide range of concerts at Koerner Hall, Temerty Theatre and Mazzoleni Concert Hall, all located in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning in Toronto. RCM's 2017-2018 concert season will see close to 100 classical, jazz, pop and world music concerts.

In August 2016, the Royal Conservatory of Music and Infrastructure Ontario reached an agreement to reduce RCM’s debt payments. In 2010, Infrastructure Ontario agreed to loan $83.6 million to the conservatory, repayable over 20 years, to help meet construction costs for the Telus Centre. Under the restructuring, the principal of the loan was reduced from $82.4 million to $52.4 million, with half of the reduction being absorbed by the government and the other half covered by an upfront contribution by RCM donors.

Financial Review:

Figures of the Royal Conservatory of Music have been consolidated with those of the Royal Conservatory of Music Foundation. RCM is a large-cap charity with donations of $9.0m in F2016. The charity’s administrative costs are 11% of donations and fundraising costs are 21% of donations. For every dollar donated, 68 cents goes to the charity’s programs, falling within Ci’s reasonable range. RCM has negative funding reserves of ($43.6m) due to loans from Infrastructure Ontario. The charity has $31.6m in donor-endowed funds.

This report is an update that is being reviewed by Royal Conservatory of Music. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated August 10, 2017 by Josh Lam.