Funding School is all about helping small charities and social enterprises to think more ambitiously with their fundraising and find practical ways to unlock new and more sustainable income streams. Legacy Giving, or Gifts in Wills, is a key area often overlooked by small charities who sometimes feel unsure about how to get started, or that it is for the sole domain of large charities.
The charity legacy consortium Legacy Foresight, predicts the next decade is “expected to bring an exceptional period of growth, fuelled by the intergenerational wealth transfer from baby boomers” and that “Appetite for legacy giving is growing and, the number of charitable bequests is predicted to rise by 30% over the decade.”
With this in mind, it’s more vital than ever that smaller shops like ours are able to tap into this fundraising opportunity, and put ourselves in the running as a potential benefactor of our supporter’s philanthropic legacies.
Therefore, on the 14th February I ran a free (but hugely valuable!) webinar entitled ‘How to get started with Legacy Giving’. The session explored how small charities can take their first steps in building a legacy proposition to encourage their supporters to consider a charitable gift in their will by taking a 'Legacy First Approach' (where a legacy donor might be the first time someone has made a donation to your charity as opposed to the more traditional pathway of a regular donor/supporter being nurtured to the point of pledging to leave you a gift in their will).
Did you know March is the first of two Free Wills Months in the UK? Both March and October are times when lots of solicitors provide a free will writing service to let you write a Will for free and support local charities. It's also a good time to promote organisations like www.freewills.co.uk who enable you to write a free will all year around. At the webinar we were joined by Clare Sweeney of Keepace consultancy www.keepaceconsults.com who runs a hands on practical fundraising consultancy and has a special interest in legacy giving for smaller charities, and Free Wills, who have secured nearly £100 million in charity pledges for over 1600 charities across the UK and currently work with over 250 local and national charities to unlock legacy giving.
Legacy fundraising is the most accessible form of giving and doesn't require a financial transaction now, making it a great way to support a cause even if you are not cash rich at the moment. So, if you are interested in this easy to implement and no-brainer form of fundraising, (strangely unadopted by so many small charities)- the webinar is an excellent opportunity to come away with some inspiration, ideas and practical tools to get started!
