Donor Recognition Pays

On holiday in Devon recently, I visited the Donkey Sanctuary, famous for its legacy income. Two things struck me. Firstly, entry was free – a great way to attract new donors from around the country. Secondly, on the walls around the site were huge boards naming their legacy donors, year by year.  They were unmissable and listed the many hundreds of people who have remembered this charity in their wills. So what can we learn from this?

The Donkey Sanctuary calls these boards its Memory Wall and, although it does not make a big play of it in its legacy promotion, it must be having an effect, as legacies account for over £18 million of its £27 million income.

This got me thinking again about how we thank and recognise our legacy donors. Charities do this in many different ways, from the traditional books of remembrance, to plaques on the wall, tree planting, lists in annual reports and, more recently, on their web pages.

What struck me at the Donkey Sanctuary was this very public form of recognition and how it no doubt also functions as a prompt to visitors to leave a legacy. So a combination of free entry, a good visitor experience and public recognition has been very effective in securing donations, including legacies, for this charity. No doubt there are other factors (strong case for support, effective communications programme etc), but this high profile recognition must be significant.

The question then is whether your charity is making the most of its opportunities to thank and recognise its special donors. You may not have any fluffy donkeys or even space for a memory wall, but maybe you have some other opportunities you to be developed? Maybe it is time to review this aspect of your legacy campaign and consider some imaginative ways of thanking and recognising donors?

Barriers to Legacy Fundraising Revealed

So here we have it - the reasons why so many small and medium sized charities miss out on legacies.

Our survey of 52 charities looked at what was stopping them from maximising legacies and found the two main reasons were a) lack of knowledge and understanding of what to do and b) lack of staff capacity to do it. In third place came a lack of strategic focus.

This was slightly surprising, given all the opportunities for training on legacies and the fact that there is so much information available these days. I had also expected the lack of strategic focus to play more of a role.

The lack of capacity is a harder problem to fix, especially when so many charities are struggling to stand still at the moment. Perhaps there is a link here to the third reason (lack of strategic focus)? If legacies were seen as a strategic priority, then maybe the staff capacity would be found, in lieu of other less profitable activities?

The learning from the survey is clear. The sector needs to make legacy education more of a priority and charities themselves need to address the capacity issue, either by reconfiguring their fundraising activities to include legacies or by seeking external support. The legacy opportunity is just too great to do nothing!

The full report on our survey can be read at:

www.wgconsulting.co.uk/news

Time - our best friend?

We all know that legacy fundraising is not about jam today - in fact this is the key reason why so many charities under-invest in it and let it slip down their priority list. After all, they have work to fund this year and next and fundraisers have targets to meet!

However, some feedback I have just had on a campaign I designed in 2002 has underlined for me again the real value of legacies and the importance of taking a long term perspective.

The campaign I am writing about was planned in 2001 for a small national charity. We ran focus groups to develop the proposition, recruited and interviewed some legacy champions, developed the campaign literature and planned the launch. In March 2002 it all kicked off and the charity then took it over to run things itself. The head of fundraising eventually moved on and - as can easily happen - we lost touch with the charity.

By chance I was recently back in touch and learned that the campaign, which is essentially still the same, has so far raised £3 million for the charity. While I no longer have the budget details, I reckon this means an ROI of up to 100:1 - a pretty good return by any reckoning.

So what has made the difference here? Well the campaign has clearly been effective but there was nothing revolutionary about it. Fairly standard stuff in fact. What has made the difference of course is time - 8 years down the line, it has had time to work (and is still working).

We hear a lot these days about the many things we need to get right in legacy fundraising (the vision, the strategy, the copy etc), but in fact the most important thing is probably to give things enough time. The best campaign will not work if not given time, whereas even a standard, competent campaign can have fantastic results if maintained consistently over a longer period.

This is an important message for fundraisers and trustees to understand. Invest in legacies now and, if you take the long view, you WILL get the return you are seeking, provided you get the basics right.

For more details about our legacy planning work, please visit:

http://www.wgconsulting.co.uk/fundraising-services/legacy-fundraising

Contested Legacies

So the RSPCA will appeal against a court decision in favour of an irate relative cut out of her mother’s will. And for £2 million, who can blame them?

Rare as it is for relatives to contest charitable legacies, there is an issue here, which relates to the value and integrity of the brand. And more importantly what can we all do to avoid getting into this situation in the first place?

For a legacy of this size, the RSPCA trustees clearly had to defend it. Charity law demands that trustees protect the assets of the charity and, after all, £2 million would help a lot of furry friends. Jo public may see if differently, however, and I wonder what will be the damage to the RSPCA’s reputation among its donors? We will most probably never know and nor will the charity. However, I just sense that – rightly or wrongly - some people may see the charity’s action as grasping or unseemly.

So in taking this risk to brand integrity, we need to ask “how low do you go?” £2 million is well worth contesting, but £20,000 or £2,000? It’s an interesting question, with no easy answers.

More importantly though is the question about how to avoid getting into this situation in the first place.

While we obviously cannot decide what goes into donors’ wills or prevent people from cutting out their relatives, perhaps we should be more upfront about the need to provide for relatives (and especially dependents) in the first place? I know many charities do this already to some degree (or sometimes pay lip service to it), but some don’t and even among those that do, it could be stressed more prominently in legacy materials.

The risk in doing this of course is that charities may lose out on some funding, but they need to balance this carefully against the need to defend legacies from outraged relatives, with all the legal costs and bad publicity involved, which itself may deter other donors from giving (and not just in the form of legacies – it may impact on other forms of giving too).

It’s a difficult circle to square, but the current situation seems to indicate that we have not yet got the balance quite right.

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.

Legacy Fundraising - Making it work for you

It's amazing how many UK charities could be raising significant funding from legacies but do not. Why is this? For some it may be not wanting to spend the time or money for others it may be just not knowing where to start.


To help charities like these, there is a very simple formula, which I call the 3 P's, consisting of:

• People


• Proposition


• Promotional channels

You can start by identifying the audiences or people that you will be targetting with your legacy message. List all the different groups (e.g. donors, members, beneficiaries, volunteers, trustees etc), then put numbers next to them. You'll probably be surprised just how many people you can reach!

Secondly, think carefully about the message or proposition you will use. Why should anyone leave a legacy to your cause? What is different or special about what you do? Try to come up with a compelling message which sums up the difference you could make with somebody's legacy. Then test this in a group which is representative of your target audiences.

Finally, you need to identify the ways you will get your message across. Chances are you already communicate with people in various ways (such as newsletter, website, displays, events etc). You don't need to reinvent the wheel and by integrating legacy messages into existing activities, you can save time and money on your campaign, although it will probably pay to develop some legacy specific materials.

So by following these three simple steps, most charities can make a start in legacy fundraising, without spending a fortune. It really can be a straightforward thing to do, so put it on your priority list today. It will be one of the best investments of time and money you will ever make for your organisation!