Measuring and evaluating legacy marketing activities can be challenging.

A lack of consistency, both within individual charities and as a wider sector, makes it difficult to evidence a causal link between what is spent on legacy marketing, and the legacy income received as a result.

The situation is made more difficult by the long gap between the initial legacy communications and the eventual ‘payback’ which may come years later.

But despite this complexity, fundraising teams need to demonstrate the value of their activities, both to secure additional investment and to evaluate the ‘return’ on the resources they invest.

The Legacy Marketing Benchmarks project can help you to:

  • Quantify levels of legacy marketing spend in relation to total fundraising spend and legacy income
  • Assess your overall legacy marketing activity – including marketing spend, areas of focus, resourcing and effectiveness –  against the sector and peer charities
  • Evaluate the different types of legacy marketing activities undertaken in three broad areas: Awareness-Raising, Acquisition and Stewardship
  • Build greater understanding of your legator database, including the different types of legator and the types of gift received
  • Develop legacy marketing strategies and budgets

“In today’s highly-scrutinised fundraising environment legacy leaders have a responsibility to understand the effectiveness of their marketing activities”

What we need from you

Every consortium member is asked to supply up to five years of data on a range of key performance indicators such as:

  • Legacy marketing budgets and overall fundraising budgets
  • Numbers of legacy staff and total fundraising staff
  • Marketing activities, spend and response rates
  • Numbers of pledgers and prospects gained
  • Pledger and prospect ‘conversion rates’ on death
  • Legator profiles by their relationship with your charity

We aim to strike a balance between collecting enough information to provide insightful results, yet keeping it as simple and easy to supply the data as possible.  We supply Excel templates collect the data, along with clear instructions and definitions to ensure consistency. One-on-one support is also available as required.

All data is anonymised and aggregated to ensure confidentiality. Case by case data is not required, and no individual charity results are shared with the consortium.

What you get

All project members receive a Powerpoint presentation of the findings, together with a set of Excel tables showing how you benchmark for each area compared to the rest of the group. Individual charity presentations are also available at an extra cost.

Timings and costs

The programme will start in September 2023, the deadline to sign up is 28th July 2023.

The cost per charity is £3000+VAT.

Key dates

The timetable for the 2023/24 programme is as follows:

  • August 2023 – Recruit sounding board, issue contracts, set up
  • Monday 11th September – Project kick off/issue invoices
  • Monday 25th September – Circulate data template
  • Friday 4th November – Data back to Legacy Foresight
  • January/February 2024 – Results produced
  • March 2024 – Consortium presentation (in-person)

Want to know more?

For more information, contact Caroline Waters

Some of our clients: