The future of legacy fundraising is bright!
Here are my notes from an excellent session presented today by Ashley Rowthorn of Legacy Futures on “The future of legacy fundraising” at the Fundraising Everywhere #LegacyFundraising virtual conference 2024. Sessions available to watch on the links above. You should be able to see the images more clearly by clicking on them. This is just a bit of flavour from one of many sessions – sign up as a Fundraising Everywhere member to see much more.
- We get immersed in stories and indeed facts and figures through reading
- Futurology is important and interesting but it’s very hard to get away from lens of today, and we tend to overreach on what technology can do for us – eg prediction in this book that Olympics will be on the moon.
- We need to be aware of “black swan events” – unpredicted events which have huge consequences, fall of Berlin Wall, 9/11, financial crash, Covid outbreak – all changed the course of our future radically. But can be positive, eg invention of internet. There may be others in the coming decades.
- It’s not about crystal ball gazing, but thinking about the broad direction of travel, what the trends are, and how we as fundraisers should adapt to that.
- But glacier-like slow moving trends will shape the nature of legacy giving
- Life expectancy has risen, more wealth, fewer having children, understanding of sexuality is changing, culture is changing – all influential when it comes to legacy giving
- Legacy giving has quadrupled since 1990, consistent in many territories, average annual growth 4.5% per year
- Driven by 3 factors – demographics, economic performance, legacy giving behaviour
- We’re confident it will double again by 2050 including inflation
- In Australia, we’re expecting it to triple
- Deaths will be 50% higher (by cohort) through change in generations of legacy giving
- Legacies currently war babies, boomers next who will be most important givers by for next couple of decades – boomers are expected to give more through legacies. Boomers are statistically the wealthiest generation that ever lived
- With rising wealth, people more likely to give and greater capacity to give
- Rich are getting richer and tend to leave bigger legacies
- 2% of gifts brought in around a third of legacy income in 2022
- Next generations are having fewer children, so more likely to be child free – will have impact on legacies as more likely to think about giving to charities in wills
- The future is bright, it will grow, and it’s resilient – but it’s changing and we can’t expect just because the market is growing that we will bring in more. We need rto understand the next generations and engage on their terms.
- Started looking at Generation X – much more diverse, doing everything later in life (eg marriage, having children, buying property) – all important from will writing perspective as these are all triggers. More diverse in terms of ethnic background, changing attitudes, less likely to be religious.
- We need to make sure our comms are representative of who they are and how it’s changed
- Less likely to implicitly trust charities, more savvy and in control, want to know they can trust your organisation – gifts with restrictions tend to be bigger so we need to respond to it.
- Perople concerned about future for families, inflation, instability in Europe and Middle East – makes people less likely to make big decisions
- People are delaying will writing, but they will still get round to it. They’re just waiting.
- So we need to think about how we are nurturing, stewarding and making sure we’re still front of mind.