Legacies Bucking the Trend

The striking feature for me of the Charity Market Monitor report, published this month, was that legacy income for the top 300 fundraising charities grew by 8%, which was well above the 0.9% overall income growth reported for these charities.

While these figures are based on analysis of the top 300 charities' accounts for 2007 and 2008 by the Cass Business School (i.e. pre-recession), they still have a relevant massage in today's changed world - that legacies are different and do not directly follow the path of other fundraising techniques.

OK, so this year's legacy values may be affected by lower house prices and a fallen stock market, but even here we read today that house prices are growing again nationally (up 1.7% in July alone) and the FTSE is now nudging the psychologically important 5,000 threshold again - in other words, clear signs that legacy values will be soon back on the way up again.

Ultimately, of course, your legacy results are less reliant on fluctuations in the wider economy than are other forms of fundraising, because they do not depend on donors' current incomes. In fact, today's legacy results are driven far more by your marketing activity during the past 5 or 10 years than by how the high street or banking sectors are performing today.

The key learning point here then is that while you cannot control the economy (and therefore the values of donors' estates), you can control your own marketing efforts, which influence the volumes of legacies you receive. on the basis that results = volumes x average values.

So while the economy may fluctuate and legacy values go up and down in the short term, in the medium to longer term your legacy results depend far more on the way you market legacy giving. In other words, don't worry too much about the economy - just focus on what you can control and make sure you are getting your marketing right. Then your results will come.