Charity begins at home, does it?
25 Jan 2012
David Philpott returns to East Africa to see the fruits of aid spending first-hand in Uganda.
Share
An uncertain legacy
Don't put too much stock in predictions about legacy income, says Richard Radcliffe.
Do we know the truth about the future of legacy income? No.
What particularly worries me is the level of misinformation which pervades and infests the sector which produces un-truths. This infected information is dangerous. It spreads its tentacles into the planning departments who make dangerous assumptions, and those assumptions are picked up and used as ‘evidence’ by decision-makers.
The outcome is that misinformed judgements are made concerning targets and budgets for legacy numbers, legacy values and legacy income overall.
Where does this information come from? Well, I have to admit I am the purveyor of some of this information but so are others. I am not saying that the information which I and others supply is wrong, but information is often too limited in its scope or too general to be relevant to a particular causal area.
Legacy fundraising is affected by a huge number of variables and an equal number of influences. So let’s look at some of the information which can so easily be misinterpreted. Firstly, is willmaking even an issue? We do not know how many people actually have wills and we will never know.
Are we really interested in ‘the general public’? Or should we focus on typical donors and volunteers who are responsible in terms of life planning? Of the last 5,000 donors aged 20-101 I have met, 77 per cent already have a will. The best prospects almost always have.
Wills can be part of the legacy communications programme but it is causally sensitive: charities dealing with vulnerable older people, for instance, can promote lasting powers of attorney. Charities dealing with young people can promote discretionary trusts to protect them and any inheritance they gain. But art galleries and museums should not touch the testamentary environment – it just kills the joy of a visit! Each cause is different and yet wrong assumptions can be made on the ‘importance’ of will-writing as part of a legacy campaign.
About 6 per cent of those who die leave a legacy, but the rate is 35 per cent for donors and volunteers. And yet a survey of 1,000 people by nfpSynergy said 7 per cent of respondents had already made legacy gifts in their wills. This research also said “43 per cent had not made wills and would not consider leaving legacies or were unsure”.
If 6 per cent leave legacies then presumably up to 94 per cent are not yet sure, but is this information of any use?
The number of charitable estates is horrendously variable. The percentage of wills containing a charitable bequest ranged between 9 per cent and 15.7 per cent between 1997 and 2008.
Why this variance? Can we ever really know what will happen? Whatever we do, and we must all do as much as we can, we do not know the following: when anyone will take action and put a gift in their will; whether that gift will stay in their will; and how much they will be worth when they die.
Of course the worst guessing game is measuring by pledgers. Yet we still hear of telemarketing campaigns whose success is measured by pledger rates which many years later are found to be so wildly inaccurate it is scary.
The most urgent need for all of us in legacy fundraising is to inform leaders and decision-makers of the almost impossible nature of legacies and how they cannot be accurately forecasted. In an ideal world the Institute of Fundraising should issue a document which recommends a more open and variable ‘template’ which reduces the short-term pressure on legacy fundraisers to provide a totally unrealistic measurement.
Richard Radcliffe is a legacy consultant at Smee and Ford
Tags
Is it fair to criticise face-to-face?
10 Jan 2012
A London councillor recently declared his intention to rid London's streets of "annoying" face-to-face...
Charities need to know where they stand when it comes to controversial donors
10 Jan 2012
It’s not just arts and education charities that need to consider the implications of gifts from controversial...
Time management: execute with excellence
2 Feb 2012
Allocating time appropriately between strategy and operations is, says John Tate, the key to business...
Consumer power: the future of social enterprises
1 Feb 2012
Peter Holbrook explains why he wants to more actively engage consumers with social enterprise.
Charity assets: Wedgwood case is just the tip of the iceberg
1 Feb 2012
Charities could be responsible for 'orphan' pensions liabilities, born from unconnected organisations....
Andrew Papworth
Consultant
Andrew Papworth
4 Sep 2010
Richard Radcliffe is unnecessarily defeatist. It is perfectly possible to gather accurate data about Wills - you just have to ask two questions via an omnibus survey (a) do you have a Will? (b) if so, does it include a gift to one or more charities? I did this every four months for many years and the answers yielded pretty consistent pictures and trend data. Analyzing the data demographically on the large aggregated samples allowed pretty precise market definitions. It was also possible to see the impact, if any, of legacy campaigns and of changing economic and social conditions. The depressing thing is the poor progress in (a) increasing the incidence of Wills and (b) the penetration of charitable bequests.
To cover the point about donors and non-donors you could always ask another question about charitable giving and cross-analyze the data.
[Reply]