Essentials of Legacy Fundraising (Practitioner Level) (3-Mar-25)

Legacy Fundraising
03 March 2025
10:00AM to 04:30PM

Individual Prices

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Package Type Available To Price
Individual Member Fee All Days Individual Members £199
Non-Individual Member Fee All Days Non Members £257

This course is designed for fundraisers who are new or relatively new to legacy fundraising. Legacy fundraising is likely to be only one part of your responsibilities.

Standard Content

Richard is committed to providing impactful learning for all delegates. As part of his pre-course preparation, he researches delegate’s organisations (in particular websites), to give feedback including suggestions for improvements. Because this is a group session 121 feedback cannot be guaranteed, his insights are shared with the whole group in the spirit of a safe and professional peer-to-peer learning space which is time limited. If you would prefer Richard did not share his insights about your organisation with the group, please contact the CIOF Academy team before the day your training takes place so we can alert Richard accordingly.

A legacy gift will often be the largest single donation a supporter will ever make, with legacies worth around £2bn to the charity sector, yet many organisations don’t pursue a legacy strategy. Understanding why people make such gifts, and how to handle what is often a simultaneously sensitive and daunting topic, will help you tap into this source of funds and boost your charity’s income.

Benefits you and your organisation

It can be difficult to get trustees to invest in legacies which, considering the benefits is very frustrating. This course focuses on how to develop a simple but really effective legacy marketing campaign with minimal risk of investment (indeed the campaign can be cash free) but also alerts you to the bigger issues and opportunities such as volunteers promoting legacies. So risk is minimal BUT the return on investment can be huge. 

By the end of the course participants will be able to:
  • Understand the current and future marketplace
  • Outcomes of research into legacies
  • How to integrate legacies into all appropriate communication channels
  • Develop key communications each donor and stakeholder segment
  • Develop each method of communication
  • Understand the risks and benefits of each medium
  • Establish the most realistic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • Develop a prudent and cost effective budget – if any
What's covered in this course:
  • Researching the legacy marketplace
  • Understand the advantages and disadvantages of each method of communication including newsletters, direct mail, brochures, website and events
  • Developing the most effective legacy communications programme
  • Evaluating and monitoring success
Legacy Fundraising: Other courses available

We run another Legacy Fundraising course depending on your role and level of experience: 

  • Developng a Legacy Strategy - designed for experienced fundraisers who are involved in the legacy marketing and need to develop a new legacy strategy and develop focused legacy materials.
It really was one of the best online training courses I have taken. Clear and straightforward slides,
great information and knowledge shared by Richard, who made the course interesting and fun. It worked really well. I learned a huge amount in one day.

Vicky Pilcher, Volunteer Fundraiser at The Big Cat Sanctuary

THE LIVE VIRTUAL TRAINING EXPERIENCE

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising's live virtual training is delivered by trainers who are leading experts in their chosen discipline. Each virtual course has been especially designed to deliver a rich virtual learning experience. Your course will feature:

  • Zoom platform learning environment
  • Interactive engagement with the trainer and peers
  • Group discussions and exercises
  • Real-life case studies and examples
  • Ample Q&A opportunities throughout the sessions

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS

The course is being delivered via the online platform zoom. To enable you to interact with your tutor and your class you will need to have access to a microphone (or access to a landline phone) and ideally have a working video link via a camera. To test compatibility with your system, you can join a test meeting via this link https://zoom.us/test

About your trainer

Richard Radcliffe FCIOF(Cert) 

Initially Richard was an in-house fundraiser. But for the last 35 years Richard has specialised in researching supporters, training anyone to make the legacy “ask” (about 40,000 of them!) and developing legacy strategies (about 500!) He was Executive Chairman of Smee & Ford for 12 years where he started the UKs first dedicated legacy consultancy. He sold Smee & Ford over a decade ago and has since run his own consultancy. 

He has met around 34,000 supporters and service users for over 500 charities to gain their perceptions of the charities they support.

His strategies cover every cause of every size on the planet.

He has worked in over 30 countries on developing legacy campaigns.

He has been Chair of the International Fundraising Congress and Institute of Fundraising Convention for four years.

In 2018 he was given, by the Institute of Fundraising (which recently gained Chartered status), the Lifetime Contribution to Fundraising Award.

His recent book, published by Smee & Ford, “Why legacies are brilliant for charities and how to get them” – is globally popular and a very practical book.

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