Legacy and in memory fundraising

Whether you call them legacies, gifts in wills or bequests – asking a donor to remember your charity, with a gift that lives on beyond their lifetime, is a delicate yet important conversation. In this section we share inspiring examples of how charities have spoken to their donors about legacy and in-memoriam giving. If you have an innovative or successful campaign to share, please let us know.

Great Ormond Street Hospital: legacy marketing 1856

by SOFII

Why is it that the giving and receipt of legacies figured strongly in Victorian literature, yet is largely absent today? The announcement in the annual report of The Hospital for Sick Children (later Great Ormond Street Hospital) appeared just four years after the hospital was founded, but it was already obvious that gifts of legacies would be very important to the health and development of the hospital.

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Southern Poverty Law Center: Partners for the Future legacy letter and brochure

by SOFII

These two items – a single page letter and 16-page booklet, which together constitute a single legacy-promotion direct mail package, represent an outstanding effort in legacy marketing by one of the leading practitioners of the direct marketing art in the USA, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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WWF integrated legacy marketing campaign

by SOFII

This is truly ground-breaking communication for fundraising. Not only did these press advertisements and posters herald a new approach to the promotion of legacies (bequests) but they were also the first ads to use jargon-free language and to talk about legacies in plain, everyday terms that any one could understand.

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Greenpeace Australia: The legacy beer mat

by SOFII

The copy you see above is a line that every writer wishes he or she had written. If half the challenge with legacy marketing is how do you raise the delicate subject with donors, then this brilliant promotion hits every button perfectly. Without doubt, it is a fundraising classic. But did it actually generate many bequests? Click to find out...

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Nature Conservancy of Canada: Legacy mailing

by SOFII

Step into our archive as David Love shares how Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) accessed the ‘pot of gold at the end of the fundraiser’s rainbow’ with a classically straightforward but very appealing legacy piece. Without doubt, this carefully and sensitively crafted pack will have raised funds very effectively for the cause and the organisation that created it.

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