Former charity executive Dan Doyle, who spent decades promoting his vision of international diplomacy through sports before being convicted in 2016 for embezzling from the nonprofit he founded, has died just a year after being released from state prison in Rhode Island.
Doyle, 74, had been on probation after serving almost six years of a seven-year prison sentence for stealing more than $1 million from his now-defunct Institute for International Sport. His death last Sunday at his home in Connecticut, where he had been living with his wife following his May 31, 2022 release, was confirmed to The NonProfit Times by a spokesperson for the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. A cause of death has not been publicly disclosed.
Doyle — a novelist, successful college basketball coach, and former boxing promoter — founded the Institute for International Sport in 1986. His signature achievement as its executive director was the World Scholar-Athlete Games, which were held for the first of four times at the University of Rhode Island starting in 1993. The inaugural event drew athletes and dignitaries from around the world and led to Doyle being honored by the likes of former President Bill Clinton, as well as the late former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. The games were held for the fifth and final time at the University of Hartford in Connecticut in 2011.
Doyle’s other endeavors included Belfast United, a sporting initiative he conceived at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland to foster improved relations between Catholic and Protestant schoolchildren there, and his Project Burundi initiative to donate sporting equipment to the African country. He also founded a poetry and prose festival in Ireland that drew acclaimed authors including Pulitzer Prize winners William Kennedy and Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes.
Doyle’s fall from grace began when a trustee of the University of Rhode Island, where his institute had been granted space to operate for decades, started questioning the lack of progress on a building construction project for which the charity had been given money. Following an audit and investigation, a grand jury indicted Doyle in 2013 for obtaining money for the project under false pretenses. Prosecutors accused him of using the money to pay for plastic surgery and vacation homes for himself and college tuition and wedding expenses for his daughters.
Doyle, who was convicted in 2016, maintained his innocence throughout the trial. He continued unsuccessful efforts to overturn his conviction even after his release last year based on what his lawyers argued was the improper admission of prejudicial evidence involving other actions for which he never was charged.
The Institute for International Sport cumulatively received a reported $7.3 million in government grants during Doyle’s time overseeing it. The charity ultimately was dissolved after a judge ordered the stolen money to be paid back and the remaining funds, totaling about $550,000, to be donated to another nonprofit.
