Remember A Charity Week: how charities are sharing the legacy message externally & internally
Melanie May | 10 September 2024 | News
It’s Remember A Charity Week (9-15 September) and across the UK, good causes are celebrating and raising awareness of gifts in Wills – both externally and internally.
Here’s how four charities: RSPB, Christian Aid, Diabetes UK and Sand Dams Worldwide are taking the opportunity that this week brings to engage supporters, the wider public, and importantly, their own staff teams and boards for greater understanding and buy in across the organisation.
The RSPB
The RSPB is keen to increase awareness of Gifts in Wills and just how valuable they are to the charity. Managing over 200 nature reserves across the UK where its staff come into contact with supporters on a daily basis, it is focusing its efforts on talking to supporters and staff at some of these.
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Harvey Kirk, Senior Direct Marketing Manager – Legacy, says:
“At the RSPB, we’re using one of our strongest assets to help promote the importance of Legacies during Remember A Charity week – our nature reserves! Throughout the week, members of the Legacy team will be heading out to their local reserves to raise the awareness of gifts in Wills and their vital importance to the RSPB.
“Whilst we want to engage with supporters visiting reserves, we also want to develop our relationships with reserve staff, increasing the internal awareness of Gifts in Wills and the Legacy team, and helping staff outside the Legacy team feel prepared to have those conversations with supporters. We’ll have Will You branded materials, plus cakes to help entice people in!”
Diabetes UK
Diabetes UK has a mixture of internal and external engagement activity taking place across Remember A Charity Week, from banners in emails to bookmarks enclosed with shop orders, a legacy roadshow to inform and inspire its supporter-facing teams, and information to help volunteers.
Jodi Kiang, Legacy Marketing Manager says: “We’re doing lots of things to spread the message far and wide. We’re including banners in emails, bookmarks in all shop orders, and supporter and member newsletters. We’re also making a big splash on social media with posts celebrating supporter stories, as well as pushing our Free Will offerings, giving a sneak preview of our new legacy TV advert, and taking the opportunity to say a huge thank you to everyone who has included a gift in their Will to Diabetes UK.
“Internally, we don’t want to load our colleagues with more work, but we do want to equip them to have more effective legacy conversations with supporters. To achieve this, we’re going to meetings that already exist to ask what comms they have going out across the week and if we can piggyback on them to share the legacy message. We’ll provide colleagues with everything they need to get behind the campaign – messaging, posters, and email footers for example. We’ve also built a slide deck to present to supporter-facing teams, which explains what the week involves. We’re also putting Remember A Charity Week themed packs on people’s desks including the bookmark so they can see what a supporter receives.
“We have an all-staff email going out from our Director of Engagement and Fundraising to mark the week too, and we’re planning a ‘lunch and learn’ event with colleagues with a special guest legacy supporter who will share their connection to our charity and the reasons behind why they’ve included a gift in their Will.”
Christian Aid
Christian Aid is focusing on internal activity this Remember A Charity Week, talking to staff throughout the organisation about the importance of writing their Will, the difference including a gift can make, and what the week itself is all about.
First, there’s an eye-catching wall. Legacy Partnerships and Training Specialist Kathy Childress explains:
“We’ve created a Remember A Charity Week wall in the kitchen on the second floor of our London office, which is a big gathering point so a lot of people should see it. Additionally, on Tuesday we’re going to position our team there for a two-hour ‘Meet and Greet’, where we’ll offer advice about writing a Will, and help staff understand a bit more about what we do. There will be doughnuts! Every member of staff in the office that day will also get a goody bag, with sweets, a Remember A Charity Week bookmark, a free Will voucher, and a packet of wildflower seeds with a little message saying: ‘To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. Love from the legacy team’.”
Other activity includes ‘hijacking’ Monday’s weekly staff prayer meeting to flag the week and talk to people about remembering, and a ‘lunch and learn’ session to introduce staff to the case management side of Kathy’s team – the people who process Wills and deal with the legal and financial side of things. “They’ll be giving a talk on how to deal with the death of a friend or relative, and what we can learn from contested and challenging Wills about how to write our Wills in the best possible way to avoid these problems.”
The legacy team is also using the week to ask staff if they would like to sign their church up to Christian Aid’s ongoing Faith Will campaign, which works to inspire congregations about the power of gifts in Wills. Importantly too, the team is taking the time to pay tribute to the support they receive from all the other teams they work with across the organisation. Kathy says: “We’re piggybacking on existing meetings to go and thank them for everything they’ve done this year to help get that legacy message out there. It’s really important to us to do that, and Remember A Charity Week provides a great opportunity.”
Sand Dams Worldwide
Sand Dams Worldwide has something going on every day of Remember A Charity Week: a mix of external and internally-directed activities that the charity plans to build on for future years.
Fundraising Manager Richard Warner explains:
“Activity kicked off with a blog on Monday on the importance of legacy giving, and the lasting difference gifts in Wills can make, and we then followed this up on Tuesday with a free webinar for supporters where they could learn more about legacy giving and ask any questions they might have.
“Helping staff develop their own understanding and expertise is just as important, so on Wednesday we’ll be running a team legacy giving quiz to help build their knowledge in a fun way, and brainstorming further ways to integrate legacy giving into their work.”
Sand Dams Worldwide will also be featuring in The Guardian’s ‘Your Later Life’ centrefold supplement on Thursday, before launching a new appeal on Friday focused on how sand dam technology in drylands can help create lasting benefits and be a gift for the next generation. The appeal will feature inspiring stories from two generations of a southeast Kenyan family. Last but not least, on Saturday, the charity will be sharing a new crossword as something light to round off the week.
Commenting on the week, Richard says:
“Remember A Charity Week is the highlight of our legacy giving year and provides a wonderful extra reason to connect with our supporters and staff and have more and better conversations about this sensitive and often difficult-to-approach subject. In planning what we’ll do during the week, we really value the opportunity to learn from other charities in the Remember A Charity network and to hear from experts in the area.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.