27 May Some amazing legacy stats from Smee and Ford
This week we came across some very interesting stats from Smee and Ford, one of the UK’s leading providers of legacy information. Their team reads over 5,000 Wills each week and, as you can imagine, they’re not short of a statistic or two!
In one of their latest whitepapers they disclose that 36,080 UK estates in 2015 contained a gift to charity (6 in every 100 deaths). Moreover, the typical profile of someone who leaves a legacy is:
- Female
- Aged 76 when she writes her Will
- Dies when she is 83
- Leaves 3 charitable bequests in her Will
And the total amount bequested to charities in total? £2.240bn in 2015. By any stretch this is an immense figure.
Smee & Ford’s recent whitepaper contains many other important stats but the ones above really standout, not least the implications when charities are marketing Will-writing and legacy services to their supporters, donors and volunteers.
These figures make sense too – when older people write Wills they tend to have a more rounded, broader perspective on life, and a greater empathy for what’s important and what’s really of value – giving back to family, society and their favoured causes become immensely important.
We’d also add that although the typical profile of a donor is a senior female (we don’t like to use that dreaded term ‘Dorothy Donor’) it still means that 4 in every 10 are male. So charities that target legacy fundraising must ensure that males and females are catered to equally in every marketing communication.
Overall it’s a fascinating piece of research, but what becomes clear is that if only 6% of people leave a gift to charity in their Will, that leaves 94% of people who don’t. Why don’t they? That’s anyone’s guess, but it lays bare the fact that legacy fundraising in the UK has barely scratched the surface of its potential. As Smee and Ford’s whitepaper points out, “if one percent of non-charitable estates (i.e. those that do not contain a gift to charity) were converted to charitable, another £78 million would be raised each year for charities”.
Now that’s a thought to leave you with.