New legacy strategy at Royal Horticultural Society

Howard Lake | 9 October 2005 | News

Gardening charity the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has launched a new legacy strategy, which aims to double its income from legacies over the next five years.

The first year of the campaign will focus on making potential supporters aware of the existence of a legacy fund, which will be the centrepiece of RHS legacy marketing and which will encourage and promote unrestricted legacy gifts.

The charity’s legacy marketing will include targeted legacy communications, information days, direct marketing, advertising and online activity.

Rachel Savage, Head of Marketing and Membership Fundraising at the RHS, explained: “The RHS currently has a regular legacy income of £500,000 per annum which is significant, but I don’t believe it reflects the size of the opportunity available to the RHS.

“We hope that this new legacy strategy will maximise legacy income from the charity’s 365,000 members.”

In 2004, a £550,000 legacy was left to the RHS and this year, a supporter who had been a member of the Northern Horticultural Society (which merged with the RHS in 2001) left a £197,000 legacy to the RHS for the development of RHS Garden Harlow Carr.

Around 200 RHS members have already attended five open days at the four RHS Gardens. In November and January, 20,000 mailings of a new legacy brochure will be sent to other selected RHS members and legacy leaflets are already available at all four RHS gardens.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.