[1] The Institute was founded in 1959 with an extensive donation by Uno and Olly Donner.
[1] It hosts the largest special library on Comparative Religion in the Nordic countries, supports research in the area of the Institute through grants, and organizes conferences and seminars.
[1][2] It publishes the journal Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis.
[3] In 2010 the Donner Institute established an annual prize for "outstanding research into religion conducted at a Nordic university" to researchers in the field of religious studies for a significant and relatively new published monograph.
[2] The recipients of this award have been: 2010: Ferdinando Sardella of Gothenburg University, Sweden, for Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati: the context and significance of a modern Hindu personalist (2010) 2011: Olle Sundström of Umeå University, for "The Wild Reindeer is Itself the Same as a God": "Gods" and "Spirits" in Soviet Ethnographers' Descriptions of Samoyedic World Views [Swedish: Vildrenen är själv detsamma som en gud": "gudar" och "andar" i sovjetiska etnografers beskrivningar av samojediska världsåskådningar] (2008) 2012: Niklas Foxeus of Stockholm University, Sweden, for : The Buddhist World Emperor's Mission: Millenarian Buddhism in Postcolonial Burma (2011) 2013: Jessica Moberg of Södertörn University, Sweden, for Piety, Intimacy and Mobility.