Leaving a gift in your Will


Gifts in Wills (legacies) are one of the main sources of income for UK charities. Currently charitable donations in Wills are worth around £1.3bn a year – this money has a major impact on the work charities do and is extremely important to all sorts of causes.

There are two main methods of leaving gifts to charity in a Will:

  1. A specific gift
    This could be a specified sum of money or perhaps a specific item such as gift of jewellery, stocks or property. If you opt to give a specific cash sum you should remember that rises in inflation will affect the value of this over time and reduce the final impact of the gift. For example, a bequest of £1,000 that was written into a Will in 1980 would now only be worth the equivalent of £380.
  2. The residue of your estate
    After remembering family and friends in your Will, you may like to leave some or all of what is left over to charity. This is the best way to leave a gift to charity as it is not affected directly by inflation so your charity will receive the maximum possible benefit from your generosity.

As a society, we could be doing a lot more to encourage giving through Wills. Increasing the percentage of Wills that go to probate including a gift to charity by just 2% would generate a further £180 million a year for U.K. charities.

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