For the love of a legacy.

If you Google 'Legacy' and click on what a person's legacy is you get a pretty good answer.

'It is about the richness of the individual's life, including what that person accomplished and the impact he or she had on people and places. ... Ultimately, the story of a person's life reflects the individual's legacy'

I like this, particularly wealth in terms of the difference someone has made on others.

Why was a Googling legacy?

It's become a large part of what I do, stuff associated with legacy fundraising that is, not random Google searches, although I do that also.

When you are emersed in a world, it's easy to think that generating gifts, either via wills, or from other forms of fundraising is anything other than normal, which isn't actually true.

For example, I've been working with an online will writer and the percentage of charitable gifts in Wills is closer to 10% than 100% in their experience, but with over 35K Wills on their system with over £35.8 million in gifts to charities committed between 2018 and the end of 2020 that's still a substantial amount on just one platform, and that was before this year which looks to be a bumper year for legacy fundraising. It's worth taking a look at FreeWills by the way, as this is the only online will writing service that doesn't charge charities for any of their services and a supporter can obtain a completely free will here too.

However, this isn't simply a plug, I'm speaking to lots of charities and fundraising has been under a lot of pressure in the last few years, actually, I'd argue it's always a tough gig.

I was chatting to another fundraising consultant last week and he asked me what I thought of our sector. It was tempting to answer by identifying the challenges, of which there are many. But while I thought about it, I threw the question right back at him and his answer struck a chord.

'It's amazing, how awesome is it to be able to persuade someone to give up their hard earned money and or time to help you fix a problem which may not have anything to do with them?'

He's right, fundraisers hold the key to unlocking dreams and making missions accomplishable. Champions of causes that need cheering about.

It's not easy though, even when you have the tools (another unashamed plug here, Ema Giving have developed some pretty nifty digital solutions for fundraisers, check them out too), you need to know how to use them.

There is a language that's helpful to learn to enable you to connect with people who care. There are ways and means to make a compelling ask and equally, you can get it hopelessly wrong if you are not attentive to the way your audience receives your message.

That said, in fact, because of the challenges, I'm proud to work with charities and if raising money to achieve difficult goals and overcome hurdles, then I'll be happy for that to be part of my legacy.