With shifting mindsets and a huge intergenerational wealth transfer underway, fundraising experts say charities need to be speaking to a more diverse cross-section of Canadians about legacy giving.
It’s a much-cited statistic at this point: charitable giving is on the rise in Canada – but the money is coming from an increasingly smaller pool of Canadians.
But that’s not true in all areas of fundraising. “Here’s the thing with planned giving: more people are giving,” says Laurie Fox, the director of the Will Power campaign with the Canadian Association of Gift Planners. “Planned giving is really ramping up,” she adds, pointing to data that shows that the portion of Canadians leaving gifts in their wills has increased from 5% to 10% – all in the last five years.
The research stems from the Will Power campaign, led by the Canadian Association of Gift Planners and the CAGP Foundation, in collaboration with Canadian charities, financial advisors, and legal professionals. The Will Power project wants to see the number of Canadians leaving gifts to charity in their wills grow to 13% by 2030. And that means diversifying who thinks about willing gifts to charities – and broadening the conversation about who legacy gift planning is for.
The latest data from the Will Power campaign make it increasingly clear that the stereotype that leaving money to charity is for older wealthy people is totally outdated. “Over the past five years, we’ve seen this shift to younger and younger,” Fox says. “Younger folks are most interested in leaving a gift in their will,” she says, adding that the data also show they are most likely to have already left a gift.
Over the past five years, we’ve seen this shift . . . Younger folks are most interested in leaving a gift in their will.
Laurie Fox, Canadian Association of Gift Planners
Younger Canadians are not just talking about leaving gifts to charities in their wills; they’re doing it. “That tells us something about the younger people today and how they’re thinking about the world, and their role and responsibility towards the world,” says Nneka Allen, the founder of the Black Canadian Fundraisers’ Collective, a community that nurtures the well-being of Canadian Black fundraisers and supports the fundraising capacity of B3 (Black-led, Black-focused, Black-serving) organizations, and the founder of The Empathy Agency Inc. “I find that hopeful.”
Bruce MacDonald, president and CEO of Imagine Canada, agrees there’s reason to be optimistic. “There’s opportunity here,” he says. “We live in a time that feels kind of gloomy, and it feels sort of down. This report suggests there is opportunity here if organizations are strategic and focused, and they have some staying power, that they could move the needle on this, which could be very beneficial to their organizations in the long run.”
So what can charities do?
Fox and others have long made the point that a person making a decision to leave a gift in their will is not doing so out of the blue. People are more likely to leave a charitable gift to an organization they already have a relationship with, or to a cause they are already passionate about.
And while charities can provide information to their supporters about how they could consider a gift in their wills, this kind of information exchange is “still very much word of mouth,” Fox says.
That’s where the latest data suggest an area of growth for charities. “The older [they] get, the more respondents were likely to say they were influenced by charities,” Fox says. “Which says to me that charities are still talking to older donors.” But with shifting mindsets and a huge intergenerational wealth transfer underway (in Canada, it’s estimated that $1.6 trillion will change hands by 2030, as Canadians leave money to the next generation), fundraising experts say charities need to be speaking to a more diverse cross-section of Canadians about legacy giving.
If you think about charities and their donor bases, the charitable sector is really used to speaking to the older, white boomer.
Laurie Fox
“If you think about charities and their donor bases, the charitable sector is really used to speaking to the older, white boomer,” Fox says. “We’re having a hard time turning that ship around and acquiring new donors and speaking to them and engaging with them in new ways. So what I love about this is that it seems like such an opportunity because more younger people are doing this.” And building on research that shows that once a person has named a charity in their will, they are more likely to give more during their lifetime, that could mean a gateway to the “next generation of donors,” she says.
That next generation may well look very different from what people have long expected from a legacy donor.
Recognizing and celebrating diversity of donors
It’s not just younger people who are more likely to be interested in leaving a gift in their wills. “Interest is higher among Black, South Asian, and Asian communities, all of whom are more likely than the national average to include a charity in their will,” the report says. “The same is true of immigrant versus Canadian-born respondents, despite being prompted less often about charitable giving.”
That makes perfect sense to Allen. “I was not surprised that the Black community, along with other racially diverse communities, have a higher propensity to engage in this form of generosity. That didn’t surprise me at all, because my experience – my experience both as a fundraiser, but also as a Black woman, a mother – speaks to that. I see that all around me,” she says. “I’m a descendant of the Underground Railroad. I come from enslaved people, and the only way that we survived is through community and the flowing of generosity in all forms.”
I was not surprised that the Black community, along with other racially diverse communities, have a higher propensity to engage in this form of generosity.
Nneka Allen, Black Canadian Fundraisers’ Collective
“There’s a practice in my community that is well known and is taken up with great regularity to this day, and it’s called sacrificial giving,” Allen says. The key, she says, is that giving is not only about giving out of your abundance; it’s giving from what you have, and often beyond your means. And that context, she says, is part of what makes the path to giving easier. “That practice has built, I think, a muscle in our community – across our communities – that allows us to be more responsive. The distance between the ask and the answer is shorter.”
But she also challenges the very idea of a legacy. “One of the things that is very necessary to understand in the Black community is that due to centuries of injustice and marginalization, they’re very persistent needs of the present moment. And in many ways, the way in which we engage in legacy building and legacy generosity is by addressing the needs of the present moment,” she says. “Those cumulative acts also make up a legacy.”
When it comes to conversations about leaving a gift in a will, that context is key. “Legacy conversations are deeply personal and often very cultural,” says Rhonda Sogren, the associate director of legacy and planned gifts at North York General Foundation. “It’s not about end of life. It’s about values.”
Sogren sees opportunity for charities to do a better job at reaching a broader cross section of potential donors. “Sadly, in a lot of organizations, there’s still the one-size-fits-all kind of mindset, and we definitely have to step away from that,” she says. For her, it’s clear that different people – and the different cultures that shape them – have a diverse range of views on legacy giving, or on talking about death and wills. “A Caribbean grandmother might see her will as a way to bless future generations, while a South Asian entrepreneur may view charitable giving as seva – an act of spiritual service. An Indigenous donor might frame legacy around stewardship of land and future kin,” she wrote in an op-ed last year. “Understanding these nuances isn’t a side note to fundraising – it’s the cornerstone of trust.”
It’s more clear than ever that fundraisers are missing the mark if they’re not reaching beyond “older, white boomers,” the Will Power report suggests.
There is clearly opportunity here and for organizations to be looking at their own data.
Bruce MacDonald, Imagine Canada
MacDonald cautions that for some, it might not be a lack of willingness. “The ability and the capacity to tailor also has been based on scale and size. So if you have a generalist fundraiser who is doing everything from direct mail to running special events to writing grants and also being expected to have legacy- or will-based conversations, it stands to reason that they don’t have the capacity or time to maybe really refine it as much as those who have a planned giving department.”
But that doesn’t negate the opportunity, he says. “There is clearly opportunity here and for organizations to be looking at their own data. What does their data tell them about where their current donor base is at, and is there opportunity that they’re not acting on?”
The data
As fundraisers seek to open up charitable-giving conversations, they face some encouraging statistics about Canadians’ openness to the idea. A little more than half of Canadians (51%) have wills, according to the latest Will Power research. And nearly half of Canadians (44%) said they were likely to leave gifts to charities in their wills.
The data show that the younger a person is, the more likely they are to consider a charitable gift in their will; the likelihood is highest among Canadians under 50. “10 percent of Canadians have included a charitable gift in their will,” the latest report says. “Younger Canadians are now more likely than older Canadians to report having done so.”
That’s new. In 2019, according to the report, “older Canadians were far more likely to report having already done so. Today, that pattern has reversed.”
There are a number of possible explanations for that, Fox says. First, “they may have less obligations,” she says, noting that “they are also writing their will for the first time.” That means that when a younger person is writing a will, you’re “training someone to do something as a first behaviour versus having to retrain later,” she says. “This whole ‘can’t teach an old dog a new trick’ is part of the equation.”
As organizations and fundraisers, we need to align ourselves with advisers and lawyers who represent different groups and different diverse backgrounds . . . to open up those conversations.
Rhonda Sogren, North York General Foundation
The latest finding “also challenges a long-standing assumption that legacy giving is driven by wealth,” according to the report. According to the research, middle- and upper-middle-income Canadians, defined here as those with household incomes between $60,000 and $200,000, are most likely to leave gifts in their wills.
At the same time, the data in the report show that more Canadians are interested in leaving a gift in a will than are actually doing it. “What really stands out is that incredible gap between the intention and the action,” Sogren says. “Many Canadians say that they would leave a gift in their will, but few actually follow through. And based on my work for a number of years, this has been the trend for a very, very, very long time,” she adds. “It tells us that it’s not necessarily a lack of generosity. I see it as a lack of awareness and comfort and opportunity.”
Sogren sees an opportunity in ensuring that people are aware of legacy giving. “As organizations and fundraisers, we need to align ourselves with advisers and lawyers who represent different groups and different diverse backgrounds . . . to open up those conversations,” she says.
Indeed, that’s the goal of the Will Power campaign: “It’s really important for the word to get out that people can do this,” Fox says. “They know they can do it, but they don’t think it’s for them.” But, she says, “anyone can leave a legacy.”
The sources included in this article will all be presenting at the CAGP conference in April in Winnipeg.
