Remember A Charity respond to Giving Green Paper

1. About Remember A Charity

Remember A Charity was formed in 2000 and has over 150 members, including nine of the top 10 top fundraising charities.

Remember A Charity is now one of the UK’s biggest cross-charity campaigns, working together to encourage more people to consider leaving a gift to charities in their will.

Legacy income is currently worth almost £2 billion a year, which is equivalent to more than 25 Comic Relief Appeals or almost 6% of the voluntary sector’s total income.

However, while almost three in four of the UK supports a charity in their lifetime, only 7% currently leave a charitable legacy.

Remember A Charity aims to do what no single charity can do alone: make legacy giving a social norm.

The campaign adopts a social marketing approach to create culture change.

It employs a multitude of tactics, including an award-winning TV and radio advertising campaign, an awareness week, tactical interventions and partnerships with solicitors and professional will-writers.

Remember A Charity is part of the Institute of Fundraising (registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1079573) and Scotland (no. SC038971)). Remember A Charity is funded entirely by its charity members.

2. Introduction

Remember A Charity welcomes the fact that the Government has recognised the importance of the voluntary sector in its Giving Green Paper, and we welcome the opportunity to respond to it.

Fundraising has to be seen at the heart of growing giving and developing a giving culture. Remember A Charity believes it can play an instrumental role in developing policy in this area.

Gifts in wills form the foundation of charities. Many charities depend on legacies and without them many would not exist.

Remember A Charity research shows that 35% of the UK aged 40+ are ‘happy to give a small amount to charity in their will’. The problem is that only 7% do it.

What is therefore needed is to get more people giving, as well as people giving more.

If we can grow the legacy market by just 4%, we could raise an extra £1 billion for UK charities every year.

It is also worth noting that this form of giving also does not require the public to pay any money to charity during their lifetime, which is particularly important in the current economic climate.
3. Consultation response

3.1 Great opportunities in the public sector

27.5 million adults in England and Wales don’t have a will (National Consumer Council, Finding the Will, 2007). Of these, very few have made an active choice that they don’t need one. Most haven't got around to it, have never thought about it or don't want to think about dying.

There is the opportunity to create a giving culture with will-writing during key life points. For example, a targeted approach around marriages, child benefit forms, pensions and property purchases.

The public should be encouraged to write a will if they undertake a significant commitment such as getting married, having a child or buying a house.

This will not only reduce intestacy rates, but also create a giving culture through wills.

The government could work with Remember A Charity to help it to reach the public through key channels, such as hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and key departments such as the Department of Work and Pensions. Remember A Charity does not currently have access to any of these groups.

The public sector also has a wide range of public-facing channels that give advice on will-writing. Directgov, for example, includes a large section on will-writing but doesn’t include any details on the importance of charitable gifts in wills. The government’s web estate could be utilised much more effectively to support legacy giving.

Greater prominence of charity messaging in these areas are particularly important given Directgov’s high ranking with search engines such as Google.

Solicitors, will-writers and banks also have a clear role in encouraging the public to think about leaving money to their favourite charity in their will.

Remember A Charity is exploring the idea of creating a network of supporting organisations who would carry the campaign logo and prompt clients to include a charitable gift. However, the VAT implications for this make it difficult for a campaign such as ours to roll this out.

The private sector has a wide range of channels, such as websites, newsletters and information packs, which can help charities reach the public.

This is often the easiest way for the private sector and charity sector to work together, particularly during a tough economic climate.

The government could make it easier for the private sector to promote charitable giving through its own channels by removing the complex VAT issues that often act as a barrier. Sector-wide campaigns, for example, could become exempt.

3.2 Information

Solicitors and professional will-writers act as a key trigger point for legacy giving. Only 15.7% of wills written last year included a charitable gift.

Most people do not consider a legacy as a way of giving to their favourite charity.

Professional advisors, such as STEP members, have a key role to play in educating the public. Remember A Charity research shows that less than a third of solicitors and will-writers always prompt their clients to consider a charitable gift.

3.3 Visibility

Legacies are one of the least visible forms of fundraising. They lack the prominence of other forms of fundraising, internally and externally.

Remember A Charity launched its first Remember A Charity Week last year to help combat this issue, with more than 100 charities taking part. Social media played a key role in generating awareness of the importance of gifts in wills.

Charities shared their legacy message with their supporters on Facebook, Twitter and websites, reaching millions of people and leading to a 200% uplift in Remember A Charity website traffic during the week.

The week trended on Twitter and our advert became one of the world’s most shared non-profit videos.

Remember A Charity would be keen to explore the possibility of the government supporting Remember A Charity Week 2011 (12-18 September), perhaps through its own social media and web estate, as well as Minister visits to projects supported by legacies.

Remember A Charity has a wealth of experience in this area and would be willing to discuss this further.

3.4 Exchange

The Green Paper highlights that only nine per cent of the total value of legacies is donated to charities, compared with 91 per cent to family and friends.

The paper quite correctly recognises that people who give get something back from their giving, but the emphasis is on pushing people into giving, with insufficient reference as to what pulls them into giving in the first place. Just telling people to get together and give money or time does not work.

Remember A Charity has undertaken extensive research in this area. Our findings show that the public are more open to the idea of a gift in a will if they’re asked to look after friends and family first. The expectation of the size of the gift is also important.

The challenge is therefore not encouraging the public to leave a higher percentage of their estate to charity, but rather making a charitable gift a social norm.

Remember A Charity follows a social marketing approach. Its extensive research shows that the public will move along Prochaska’s stages of change model – from active rejection to action – if the messaging is targeted to each group.

It is not just about asking. It is also about how the gift is asked for. It is about better asking. The government could work with Remember A Charity to ensure that the right messaging is used at key touch points with public services to encourage legacy giving.

Inheritance Tax is also a factor when leaving a legacy, particularly with the higher income groups.

The government could examine the benefits of restructuring the IHT system, with perhaps a charitable exemption that has some form of tapering effect which benefits the charity and the next of kin.

3.5 Support

Businesses and the government have a key role to play in their support for the Big Society.

Banks could be encouraged to do more in their branches on the benefits of giving to a favourite cause. ATMs could nudge people to write a will.

Remember A Charity would be also interested to hear how it could meet its members in un-used spaces in the government estate.

Conclusion

Legacy charity income is worth almost £2 billion a year. If we could grow the market a fraction we would generate millions more for good causes.

We know from our research that it is possible to grow the legacy market. To do this however, we need support from outside the voluntary sector. We cannot rely on charities alone to create a culture shift in legacy giving.

The Giving Green Paper rightly highlights legacies as an opportunity for growing the voluntary sector.

The government’s web estate and where individuals interact with public services are key opportunities for legacy fundraising. If we can work together on this area alone, legacies could help build the capacity required for a Big Society.
For further information, please contact:

Rob Cope
Director
Remember A Charity
12 Lawn Lane
London, SW8 1UD
Email: rob@rememberacharity.org.uk;
Phone: 020 7840 1030

What would legacy giving look like in Cameron’s Big Society?

Stop smoking. Drink less. Exercise more.

We’re bombarded with messages about how we should change our lifestyle.

But the Big Society debate is presenting another challenge: how can we achieve a culture change of giving?

The Giving Green Paper challenges the voluntary sector to find new ways of creating a society that is less reliant upon the state and more reliant on individuals’ support.

Take legacy fundraising, for example, which the Giving paper rightly singles out for “potential to go further”.

Almost three in four people in the UK support a charity in their lifetime. And yet, only 7% of us leave a charitable gift in our will.

Research by Remember A Charity shows that no single driver will create a culture change of legacy giving.

People’s circumstances vary widely, and the motivations and barriers driving legacy-giving decisions are diverse.

Any culture change campaign needs to be multi-faceted, employing a range of strategies and interventions.

The Green Paper’s focus on the percentage of legacy value going to friends and family compared with charity is not the big challenge.

It’s about creating a society where a gift to charity in a will is a normal thing to do.

In a bigger society, we could do more together to make this change.

There are arguably greater opportunities to promote will-giving where individuals interact with public services – from pensions to paternity leave.

Banks could be encouraged to do more in their branches on the benefits of giving to a favourite cause.

The private sector could support the legacy message through its charity of the year partnerships and with its staff.

Professional will-writers could also do more to actively promote the charity message. Less than a third currently do this.

Remember A Charity has made great progress in many of these areas over the past 10 years, developing partnerships in the legal and private sector.

By pooling our resources we have successfully built a consumer campaign that has stimulated change.

But in a bigger society that understands the collective role in creating a giving culture, there could be even bigger returns.

- Rob Cope, Director of Remember A Charity

Report reveals a £57 million drop in vital legacy income for charity sector

The UK charity sector could be facing a 'double whammy' to its income, reveals a report released today by the ESRC Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy (CGAP) at Cass Business School, London, and charity consortium Remember A Charity, putting pressure on vital frontline services. The report outlines a 3% drop, equivalent to £57 million, in the £1.9 billion value of legacy gifts left to charities in wills each year, which comes at a time of looming cuts to the third sector's annual £12.8 billion statutory funding.

This financial pressure on the third sector is also occurring when charities are being asked to contribute to the new government's 'big society' agenda. The vision is to increase charity and community involvement in the delivery of public services, such as welfare and health.

New research outlined in the report revealed that the 20 leading legacy-earning charities, which together attract 42% of all charitable legacies in the UK, showed a real annual fall of 3% in their legacy values in 2008-09. The fall has come as market trends undermined the assets and property values to which legacies are linked. If extended to the entire charity sector, this relates to a collective £57 million drop in income.

Cuts to the statutory funding of the charity sector have yet to be revealed, but a recent report by The Charity Finance Directors Group estimated that it would "fall dramatically". A 1% reduction will mean an additional £128 million reduction in finances.

Currently the £1.9 billion raised annually from legacy giving - the equivalent of over 25 Red Nose Day appeals - comes from only a tiny proportion of the population (7% of adults aged 40+ in the UK ). This is in contrast to the 74% of people in the UK who regularly support a charity during their lifetime .

Commenting on the findings of the report, author Professor Cathy Pharoah, Co-Director of CGAP at Cass said:

"Gifts left to charity in wills are such a crucial source of funding to many charitable activities that it is vital to keep a watching brief on their value in this uncertain economic environment.

Some charities depend heavily on the income they raise from legacy gifts, while others are increasingly hoping that legacies and private giving will help them weather any forthcoming public spending cuts."

Stephen George, Chairman of Remember A Charity, added:

"Legacy giving is the invisible lifeline for so many UK charities yet many people don't realise they can make a gift in this way; they think it's about large gifts, and is not for them. The truth is, that after looking after family and friends first, a small share of whatever is left can make a real difference to charities and the invaluable work they do."