While charities invest significantly in building strong brands, understanding their impact on legacy giving has remained challenging. Legacy decisions are often shaped by years of trust, emotional connection and personal experience, while the time between someone writing a will and their gift being received makes it difficult to isolate the influence of brand.
This multistage research programme set out to explore this relationship: exploring how brand strength and investment relate to legacy performance, the brand attributes that matter most for legacy giving, and how brand and legacy activity work together to drive legacy income.
The work was supported by a ‘learning circle’ of 24 leading charities, pooling budgets to share experiences and data to build evidence and insight. The programme provided consortium members with actionable insights, and collaborative learning to empower legacy fundraisers to stay ahead in a competitive environment and future-proof their strategies.
We are grateful to our learning circle members for agreeing to share the information in this briefing more widely.
