Co-op joins Remember A Charity to promote leaving a charitable legacy
Howard Lake | 24 June 2012 | News
The Co-operative Legal Services is joining the Cabinet Office and Remember A Charity to encourage people to leave a gift to charity in their Will.
The new partnership aims to encourage a further 4% of the UK population to leave a legacy when writing or updating their Will. This could raise a further £1 billion a year for good causes. Legacy income is currently worth a little under £2 billion to UK charities.
The potential remains considerable. Only 7% of people in the UK leave a charitable bequest, although when questioned 35% of people in their 40s or older say that they are happy to do so. In the USA, 20% of people leave donations to charities in their Wills.
The Co-operative is working to develop its Will writing service to encourage more people to leave charitable legacies, through test and learn activity, research and insight into key life stages and triggers, such as births, marriages and retirement.
Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society said: “We are working with The Co-operative and Remember A Charity because we want more people in the UK to consider leaving money to good causes when they write their Will, so that we can start to increase legacy donations from their current level of £2 billion.”
Ian Mackie, Sales & Marketing Director of The Co-operative Legal Services, said: “This is a new and exciting partnership for us, and we are committed to developing our Will writing service to make it easier for customers to leave a charitable gift through a range of measures… This process could generate thousands of gifts in Wills a year and have a very positive emotional impact too as we know people who leave a legacy feel really good about supporting a cause that’s close to their heart.
“In order to encourage this change, we are testing variations to the Will-writing process to establish which is the most effective way of encouraging people to leave a legacy gift.”
www.rememberacharity.org.uk
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.