The voluntary sector’s investment in legacy fundraising increased by 31 per cent in just a year, data from Legacy Futures consultancy has revealed.
The group’s biannual benchmarking programme, Legacy Marketing Benchmarks, collected data for the financial year ending March 2023 from a consortium of 30 charities of different sizes and sectors.
It found that in the 2022/23 financial year, just over 6 per cent of these charities’ fundraising expenditure went on legacies – up from almost 4 per cent in 2018/19.
The research found that at these charities, expenditure on legacy fundraising had increased by 31 per cent when compared with the previous year.
Ashley Rowthorn, chief executive of Legacy Futures, said the increase in legacy fundraising was likely due to an increase in charities’ confidence.
“As legacies have become an increasingly significant proportion of income to charities, charities’ confidence is building, fuelling the desire to invest more in this fundraising stream,” he said.
“Attitudes within organisations are also changing, as colleagues and senior leaders become aware of the importance of legacies and understand that investing now makes a considerable difference for the sustainability of their charity in the future.”
The research found that the return on investment in legacy marketing “remains high”, with about £15 gained for every £1 spent.
This figure takes into account the negative impact of a delayed return and the potential uplift of silent legators, who don’t make their pledges known to the charities they support.
But the research found that the charities consulted spent just £1 on legacy marketing for every £35 of legacy income and had just one staff member for every £3.3m of legacy income.
Rowthorn said: “Legacy income is the single biggest source of voluntary income, contributing 30 per cent of all donated income for the top 1,000 charities. It’s also set to grow, and is predicted to reach £10bn per year by 2050, as the death rate increases and attitudes around legacies continues to change.
“While it’s good news that more charities are investing in their legacy marketing, one inevitable outcome is that the marketplace becomes more crowded, with more charities than ever vying to be heard. This means that individual organisations are having to work harder to cut through and that those not investing may struggle to be noticed.”