Somebody is making a will. She has decided to leave something to a charity her father benefited from.
She looks at the website for the wording her solicitor needs, the registered number and whether she can say what it should fund. There is a legacy page with a photograph, a paragraph about the difference legacies make and a telephone number.
She does not telephone. She tells her solicitor to leave a general gift to a similar charity whose website had the wording on it, and the first charity never knows any of this happened.
1. Publish the wording a solicitor needs
The single most useful thing on any legacy page, and the one most frequently missing.
2. Publish the registered name and number
Exactly as it must appear, since a gift to a slightly wrong name creates a problem the supporter will never know about.
3. Explain the types of gift plainly
A share of an estate, a fixed amount or a specific item, with the advantages of each explained in ordinary language.
4. Explain whether it can be restricted
Whether a supporter can say what it funds, and what happens if that work no longer exists, which people worry about.
5. Explain that they do not have to tell you
And why many people do, since the pressure to declare is what stops some people proceeding at all.
6. Explain that it can be changed
Wills are revised, and saying plainly that a gift is not a permanent commitment removes a genuine barrier.
7. Explain what happens afterwards
How the gift is used, whether the family is acknowledged and what the charity does, which matters to the person deciding.
8. Handle the in memory enquiry separately
Somebody arranging donations after a death is grieving, and the tone, speed and care required are entirely different.
9. Make in memory giving practically easy
Collection arrangements, online pages, funeral director coordination and acknowledgements, at a moment when the family has no capacity.
10. Explain the acknowledgement position
Whether donors are thanked, whether the family is told the total and what happens with names, which families ask and rarely find.
11. Answer the administrative questions for executors
Which is the ground in gift aid legacies and other donor admin questions.
12. Provide a written route
Because almost nobody will telephone a charity to discuss their own death, and a written route is what actually produces these enquiries.
13. Answer at the hour people think about it
Which is the evening, and frequently after a bereavement, when no office is open.
14. Explain the tax position without advising on it
That gifts to charities are treated differently, and that a solicitor or adviser should confirm what applies. Pointing at it is useful and assessing somebody's estate is not something a charity should do.
15. Answer the wording question without a telephone call
An assistant that gives the exact wording and registered details, explains the types of gift, states plainly that nothing needs to be declared and can be changed, and handles an in memory enquiry with appropriate care reaches somebody who was never going to ring. The donor questions sit in donor questions that go unanswered on charity websites, the faith sector version in giving and legacy questions supporters ask churches, and the matching logic in ai shopping assistant product fit. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under nonprofits.