Estate planning remains an overlooked tool for closing the racial wealth gap. By fostering accessibility and trust, planned-giving professionals can contribute to economic justice while strengthening the future of philanthropy.
Government funding across all of Turtle Island is becoming increasingly weaponized against non-profits, and in Canada a chorus of calls is echoing for charitable organizations to diversify revenue streams – and the supporters within those streams. Planned giving (gifts in wills, gifts of registered savings products, life insurance policies, and assets) has always been a way of strengthening long-term charitable budgets. This form of giving is uniquely well positioned to address the new landscape that non-profits face as we navigate a time of both an increasingly unpredictable economic landscape and the great intergenerational wealth transfer, with $1 trillion set to flow from Canadian baby boomers to their heirs – and Good Works predicting that $280 billion from those estates will trickle into non-profits through charitable bequests. While these gifts will do unquantifiable good for our communities, what if we could extend the impact of planned giving beyond financial sustainability? What would happen if we intentionally fostered reciprocal relationships with communities of colour that have historically been excluded from economic opportunities?
The largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history is happening right now. If racialized communities are not positioned to participate in this transfer, the racial wealth gap will not just persist as is; it will continue to widen. Planned-giving professionals have the power to help break cycles of economic exclusion. Inclusively promoting estate planning is one of many necessary interventions, but it is a concrete, actionable step. And by taking this step, we can help ensure a long-term, stable, diversified revenue stream for the organizations and missions we are so passionate about.
Planned-giving professionals have the power to help break cycles of economic exclusion.
I’ll always remember the moment of belonging I felt during the interview process for my current role when I was asked, “How would you incorporate justice, equity, inclusivity, and reconciliation into planned giving?” Happily surprised, I found myself saying that I was going to ask the panel that same question myself, and our organization is far from being the only institution navigating this work. This past Black History and Futures Month, I attended “Building Generational Wealth and Closing the Racial Wealth Gap,” a webinar hosted by Raphael Tachie, partner at Dentons law firm, and the Estate Planning Council of Canada. The conversation featured legal and financial experts Dheeraj Bisla, Shawnnette Fraser, Delecia Graham, and Jacy J. Wingson. South of the border, Giving Docs has published Can Planned Giving Advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)?, a three-part research paper that definitively shows that increasing the rate of estate planning in communities of colour diversifies donors. Their shared insights underscore a critical reality: the racial wealth gap is not an accident of history in history – it is the direct result of ongoing systemic policies that have long obstructed Black and Indigenous economic prosperity. Within the Black diaspora, there are many varied communities with unique histories, cultures, and victories against systemic oppression – but when living under colonial governments such as that of Canada, the systemic oppressions we face share many similarities.
Modern, donor-centric fundraising traditionally focuses on transactional relationships to raise funds – funds with which to do good. What if we, as planned-giving professionals – lawyers, financial advisers, and charity professionals – could also do good through the way in which we raise these funds? What if we could promote estate planning in communities of colour, and in turn assist in narrowing the racial wealth gap? By committing to unlearning how transactional colonialism appears in our work and relearning reciprocal community-led methods, we can begin to transform philanthropy by planting the seeds of generational wealth, justice, and self-determination. To be clear, this is one way of building upon philanthropy’s existing model to foster a movement toward equity, one legacy at a time, and only one example of many practices of inclusivity and justice that are being added to our organization’s planned-giving strategy.
The case studies and statistics below centre Black and Indigenous communities, reflecting the areas where I have the strongest professional and personal understanding. Just as the law is meant to be a living document, evolving to serve the people, I believe that philanthropy must constantly grow to best serve its constituents. At the intersection of my personal and professional identities is systems change within philanthropy – systems change for economic justice to begin healing from the violent, extractivist harm of racial capitalism.
The foundations of the racial wealth gap
Canada, like all colonial states, has a well-documented history of policies designed to suppress Black and Indigenous economic progress. Physical and political violence – both systemic and interpersonal – have created the racial (and gendered) wealth gap we see today. Governments at all levels in Canada have enacted policies of racial violence. There are many such stories from coast to coast. In the 1970s, the City of Vancouver, after decades of neglect and racist propaganda, destroyed Hogan’s Alley, a predominantly Black neighbourhood in the city’s east end. Hogan’s Alley was one of the first areas of Vancouver to be settled, with Black settlers there from the inauguration of the city. Now, the once vibrant community is a barren concrete expanse of road. A decade earlier, on the opposite coast, another thriving Black community suffered the same fate when the City of Halifax bulldozed Africville. Of course, these important Black communities could be built only after the land had been stolen from First Nations and their homes and communities destroyed. The genocide committed against Indigenous Peoples by the Government of Canada has resulted in many unique systems of oppression, including the Indian Act, that continue to obstruct full economic participation. Capitalism itself, an engine of racial exploitation, compounds these injustices.
Beyond the destruction of physical communities, systemic oppression and barriers persist in more insidious ways. Racist land covenants preventing people of colour from owning homes in British Columbia were legal until 1978, and to this day many have not yet been removed. Black and Indigenous people face higher borrowing costs, lower credit scores, and discriminatory lending practices that make homeownership – and as such generational wealth – far less attainable. The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation, a U.S. study,shows that “holding jurisdictions and property tax rates fixed, black and Hispanic residents nonetheless face a 10–13% higher tax burden for the same bundle of public services.” Similar biases exist in Canada, where systemic discrimination in property assessments and mortgage lending continues to disadvantage racialized communities. Statistics Canada’s 2016 census found that non-visible minorities receive 152% more in investment income. According to a 2021 report on retirement income from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the average income of Indigenous and racialized seniors in Canada is 25% to 32% less than that of white seniors. These inequities are the symptoms of intergenerational systemic injustice.
Police violence continues to disproportionately affect Black and Indigenous people in Canada, leading to their being over-represented in the criminal justice system, and a criminal record is an almost insurmountable barrier to gaining employment. Employment disparities further deepen economic inequalities. Despite having higher levels of education on average, racialized Canadians face greater challenges in the job market. Two years after graduation, racialized workers report lower earnings, unionization rates, and pension plan coverage than their non-racialized, non-Indigenous counterparts. These gaps persist across generations, with racialized men earning 78 cents and racialized women earning just 59 cents for every dollar earned by non-racialized men. According to this 2022 study by the Royal Bank of Canada, even when you factor in more formal education in racialized communities, these disparities have remained largely unchanged since 2005.
True wealth is not just about income; it is about assets.
These systemic injustices are reflected in philanthropy through the inequitable, disproportionate flow of funding to Black- and Indigenous-led and -serving charitable organizations. The Unfunded report, published in 2020 (which also details more examples of systemic injustice faced by Black people), found that private and public foundations have underfunded Black-led or Black-serving organizations and that while community foundations fared better, for every $100 disbursed, only seven cents went to Black-led organizations. When Sharon Redsky, Wanda Brascoupé, Mark Blumberg, and Jessie Lang reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2018, they found that even though Indigenous people represent approximately 4.9% of the population, Indigenous groups received just over .5% of gifted funds.
As we know, true wealth is not just about income; it is about assets. Homeownership and intergenerational transfers of wealth are the primary means of financial security, yet for many Black and Indigenous families, these opportunities have been systematically denied. In today’s economy, where rising housing prices make homeownership increasingly unattainable without generational wealth, these disparities are exacerbated. Disturbingly, for Black populations in Canada, the poverty rate increases with each generation – a direct consequence of these systemic barriers.
Estate planning: A less-travelled path toward economic equity
While the wealth gap is vast, solutions do exist. One of the most overlooked, yet still a powerful tool for addressing economic disparities, is estate planning. As estate-planning professionals know, adequate estate planning secures financial stability for future generations and protects intergenerational wealth from systemic erosion.
Adequate estate planning secures financial stability for future generations and protects intergenerational wealth from systemic erosion.
A study from the Center for Retirement Research highlights the impact of will-writing on the racial wealth gap in the United States. Black households are significantly less likely to have wills than white households, leading to assets being lost to probate, creditors, and legal disputes. The study found that equalizing will-writing rates could reduce the racial wealth gap by 10% over three generations. The data suggests a critical need for culturally informed estate-planning initiatives, particularly as many surveys and studies find that people of colour are more likely to leave a larger bequest than their white counterparts.
A 2018 Texas Tech University study found that African-Americans put more importance on charitable and religious bequests than others did. This suggests a documentation barrier – a barrier that advisers can actively address – rather than a lack of charitable intent.
The 2022 literature review What We Know About Legacy Giving details the importance of “will-making schemes” to charities looking to reach out beyond white donor audiences. It also shares data collected in the United Kingdom that found that while 39% of white respondents have wills, only 12% of Black and other racialized respondents do. The authors suggest that further research be carried out among people of the global majority to “understand both the barriers to estate planning, and cultural attitudes to gifts in wills.” While this data and research reflects populations outside of Canada, market similarities allow us to assume that the results would be similar in Canada. We have to assume, as this data isn’t collected through Statistics Canada, or through any major estate-planning initiatives or providers.
Estate planning is not simply a legal necessity: it is an act of intergenerational resistance.
The lack of data on racial giving and estate planning reflects a long history of systemic exclusion. When communities are deliberately left out of research and reporting, their financial realities remain unseen, and their needs go unaddressed – they’re pushed into the margins. However, this gap presents a crucial opportunity for organizations to lead the way in collecting and analyzing this data. By investing in ethical, community-led, community-accountable research that illuminates the barriers faced by Black and Indigenous communities in estate planning, we can begin to develop more inclusive strategies that foster economic empowerment.
Estate planning is not simply a legal necessity: it is an act of intergenerational resistance. It empowers families of colour to:
- Ensure that their wealth endures across generations. Wills, trusts, and clear beneficiary designations protect assets from excessive taxes, legal fees, and probate costs, helping families retain intergenerational wealth despite systemic barriers.
- Minimize legal hurdles and prevent displacement. Probate is costly, time-consuming, and public, often making Black and Indigenous families vulnerable to land loss. Revocable living trusts keep assets out of the courts, reducing the risk of disputes and ensuring that land and wealth remain within the community.
- Invest in the success of future generations. Incentive trusts can be structured to support education, entrepreneurship, and financial responsibility, fostering economic empowerment in Black and Indigenous communities long denied access to generational wealth.
- Defend against systemic threats. Estate planning is a tool for resistance, shielding assets from creditors, lawsuits, and predatory developers who have historically targeted Black and Indigenous communities for displacement and extraction.
The role of fundraisers and philanthropy
Many of us are asking ourselves how we can bring more of our community-led values into our everyday practice by deepening our commitment to active allyship in a practical and actionable way. At the same time, the non-profit sector is also struggling with how we can ethically diversify supporter bases for long-term stability when government funding is collapsing and an ever-increasing number of gifts are being stored in investment accounts labelled “donor-advised funds” – with the investment accounts of foundations profiting off the very companies that are the reason many of our organizations’ missions exist.
By educating on and promoting trust in estate planning through charitable giving . . . we can help balance the scales of economic injustice while facilitating gifts for a brighter future.
As charitable estate-planning professionals, we are uniquely positioned with the right skill set to strengthen our organizations’ revenue through diversification and to use estate planning to reduce the racial wealth gap by adding culturally informed and inclusive strategies to our existing work. We already know and value the importance of authentic, reciprocal relationship-building. Our daily roles often include building trust and educating in a compelling manner. By addressing systemic barriers with intentionality, we have the ability to bridge the gap through the shared interest in our organizations’ missions. By educating on and promoting trust in estate planning through charitable giving, thus contributing to intergenerational mobility, we can help balance the scales of economic injustice while facilitating gifts for a brighter future. Integrating estate-planning education into fundraising strategies not only diversifies our supporter bases, but also builds trust within communities historically excluded from wealth-building opportunities. It also enables us to serve our supporters of colour one last time by ensuring that their final wishes are followed as we fulfil our fiduciary duty to their estates and our organizations.
The following is an inexhaustive list of actions to incorporate into daily work. This list is always shaped through remembering that fear of failure is a tenet of white-supremacy culture that can appear in our work, and that strategies should always be adjusted based on feedback (the Right Relations Collaborative has generously shared an excellent resource called “Auntiedotes to White Supremacy in Philanthropy”):
- Ethical data collection and internal structuring
Understanding who makes up your supporter or client base is key to building stronger, more inclusive relationships. One of the beauties of values is that they can be used as a matrix with which we evaluate every action we take. Who are we hiring as consultants? Are we looking only within our own networks? Are we using inclusive language in surveys? What aren’t we asking? Who isn’t being asked? Identifying gaps and tracking metrics can help, but it’s important to do so ethically. This means compensating people for their time and insights, using language and data collection methods that centre their leadership. Truly participate in active listening – listening to understand their perspectives without responding, and reporting back to communities with the data collected.
- Expanding your circle of stakeholders
Take a moment to reflect on your professional adviser circle, contractors, consultants, and staff. Do they reflect the communities you currently serve and those you hope to engage? If not, consider whether your organization is ready to create a welcoming and supportive environment. Strong anti-racism policies and a commitment to protecting fundraisers of colour are essential foundations. Valuing the expertise of advisers and consultants within those communities and staff of colour – especially when their insights challenge the status quo – strengthens organizations in meaningful ways. Leadership openness to new perspectives is key, and while change can come with challenges, every step forward brings learning and growth.
- Tailoring communications to your audience
If you’ve gathered insights from surveys or conversations, consider whether you have existing supporters who could serve as estate-planning ambassadors. Small but thoughtful updates – diversifying the stories and imagery in your materials – can make a big difference in reflecting the values, family structures, and cultural priorities of your audience. There’s no need to overhaul everything; small steps build trust. However, if the relationships are not yet established enough to ethically collect and tell those stories, it’s best to focus on connection first; the next two steps will help guide that process. Consider as well how your events are hosted. Are they expensive, hierarchical, lecturing-style events in colonially named inaccessible buildings? Or are they barrier-free, community-centred, accessible, and collaborative gatherings?
- Meeting people where they are
Building meaningful relationships often starts with showing up. Attending community and cultural events, partnering with non-profits and groups led by the communities you wish to engage with, and leveraging media channels that reflect their voices can help create a sense of belonging. Working with trusted local businesses and affinity groups to sponsor charitable events is another way to establish connections. Many Black and Indigenous supporters rely on trusted circles and Elders when making decisions, while younger generations may appreciate resources like free online will services. A Legacy Foresight 2024 study notes that while online will-makers tend to be younger, a significant number are also over 65. Free online will services could be a huge asset in promoting estate planning within Black and Indigenous populations, and online wills are more likely to include a charitable bequest.
- Building trust through presence
Trust is at the heart of strong relationships. Sharing what you’ve learned during your data collection – openly, honestly, and in accessible ways – helps deepen connections. Having leadership and board members attend community events signals genuine commitment. Asking thoughtful questions, listening with care, and offering transparent answers can go a long way in overcoming historical distrust of institutions, particularly among younger generations and Black and Indigenous communities.
This will take time. Just like our work in charitable estate planning, building relationships rooted in trust and reciprocity is a long-term investment. Shifting expectations around performance indicators and return on investment to reflect this reality will allow for more authentic and sustainable engagement. The size and overall culture of an organization will shape the steps it can take toward more inclusive planned-giving practices. Larger and more progressive organizations may have the capacity to hire dedicated staff, update or overhaul materials, conduct new surveys, host focus groups, and organize events that foster engagement with racialized communities. But every organization has the ability to review internal policies, tell more diverse stories, and diversify trusted adviser circles.
Building an inclusive future for planned giving
Canada’s planned-giving sector has the ability to, and must, reckon with historical inequities and adopt more inclusive practices to address the systemic barriers that Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities face in estate planning. These barriers have long hindered their ability to protect their families, pass down wealth, and ensure that their values are reflected in their legacies – advantages that have disproportionately benefited white Canadians. We are in the business of legacy, and at the same time we are creating our own legacies. How will future generations who take up our mantle remember us? As the ones who developed self-awareness of our proximity to power and privilege? Who unlearned internalized colonialism and bias? Yes, we facilitate charitable legacies that create a brighter future – and we can intentionally choose to do it in a way that compounds the benefits to society. The intergenerational impact of colonialism needs to be redressed in a way that will benefit future generations. This is aligned with the Akan teachings of Sankofa and the Haudenosaunee seven-generations teachings. Both philosophies, in their own way, highlight the importance of looking to the past to honour future generations.
By expanding research and outreach efforts, organizations can deepen their understanding of the systemic barriers racialized donors face in estate planning and create meaningful opportunities for engagement, ensuring that legacy giving is more equitable and reflective of Canada’s racialized communities. By increasing estate-planning rates within these communities, estate-planning professionals can help foster greater economic equity while also strengthening the future of philanthropy. We have the power to help shape philanthropy to adapt to serve the needs of communities in solidarity – as trust-based symbiotic networks of mutual aid. The ever-relevant wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us that “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” We have the power to shape philanthropy to address the circumstances of economic injustice.
Chantelle Ohrling will be presenting at the Canadian Association of Gift Planners conference in Edmonton, which takes place April 9 to 11.
