The number of charities being left a legacy has risen by 10 per cent in the last year, according to data released this week.
Smee and Ford, a legacy benchmarking consultancy, presented the figures at a Remember A Charity event on Monday and subsequently published the figures yesterday.
They show that the number of charities named in wills in England, Scotland and Wales increased by 10 per from 2014 to 2015, increasing the total number of organisations benefiting from legacies to 9,910.
The figures taken from Smee and Ford’s legacy database also show that 4,410 of those charities had not been named as legacy beneficiaries prior to it starting to compile this data in August 2012. Since 2012 the total number of charities named in wills across England, Scotland and Wales has now risen to 19,261.
Some 18 per cent of the total charities were of a religious nature, while 12 per cent were culture or heritage based and a further 10 per cent were community organisations.
Smee and Ford’s data also showed a marked increase in the number of health charities being named in wills, with 195 such charities entering the legacy register in 2015. The number of animal charities being named fell.
Total legacy income across the sector grew to £2.2bn in 2015, an 8 per cent increase on the previous year despite a marked decrease in the number of people who died in the same period. Smee and Ford will be providing a total legacy income update for the next financial year in September 2016.
Rob Cope, director of Remember A Charity, said: "These findings mirror our own experiences at Remember A Charity. Greater competition may mean that some charities will see their market share squeezed, which is why our collective work to encourage and grow legacy giving is so important. Our drive for behavioural change in the wider public is ever more important in making legacy giving a social norm.”
Mark Pincher, data analyst at Smee and Ford said while a small number of charities attract the majority of bequests, the recent findings show that “annually there are up to 10,000 charities mentioned in wills, which is much broader than we initially perceived”.
