British organisations Remember a Charity and the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association are in discussions with foreign fundraising groups about how to grow the legacy markets in their respective countries.
Rob Cope, campaign director at Remember A Charity, told Civil Society that the organisation is in talks with Australia, the US, Japan and a number of European associations about ways in which the ten-year-old British organisation can share knowledge about campaigns and research into market barriers.
"It’s early days," said Cope, advising it was not yet clear what shape any collaboration or arrangement with foreign bodies would take. However, he added: "We are at a place where we feel we want to progress this quite quickly now."
Cope said that more detail on the development of international cooperation will emerge within the next few weeks, but in the meantime he was not ruling out any options, including franchising the Remember A Charity model.
“There’s a huge appetite out there and there are lots of countries all over the world who want to do a similar thing to what Remember A Charity is doing. We do know that most charities are unsure how to do it and many charities are looking to us for lessons,” he said.
International interest in the work of Remember A Charity, Cope said, is a testament to the success and perseverance of the campaign and the charities that have stuck with it.
Meanwhile, the PFRA too is toying with the prospect of spreading its model and message internationally.
The face-to-face regulator is also in the very early stages of considering how to go about going global, but chief executive Mick Aldridge said: "It’s all conjecture at the moment. We’re not especially picky about 'intellectual property' and all that but we just feel that if other [organisations] want to go down this route they'll save themselves a lot of time and bother doing it in a co-ordinated way and not re-inventing the wheel, as they say.
"So we’re toying with the idea of offering international organisations some sort of affiliate membership just so they can network and learn. But that's about it at the moment and we haven’t even got very far with that."
Aldridge has already translated his email 'out of office' reply into French, German and Dutch.