Podcast Transcript Episode 15

Sanita: Welcome to Legacy Fundraising Chat, where I talk about everything Legacy related to help you as a fundraiser, generate more interest amongst your supporters in Legacy giving.  I’m your host, Sanita Guddu, Founder of Persuasion, a  Legacy marketer, providing consultancy training, coaching, and interim support to charities of all sizes.

Sanita: In today’s episode, I’m bringing to you a guest from a Charity St. Basils that had always had a very special place in my heart. Having been born and raised in Birmingham, St. Basils has definitely played a huge part in my life.

I had the opportunity to volunteer for St Basils in 2017 within one of their emergency placements, and in 2021, the pleasure of working with Barrie and his team on developing their first Legacy Strategy.

So Barrie, thank you for agreeing to come on the show!

Barrie: Oh, thank you very much for having me, I really appreciate it.

Sanita: You’re welcome. So now our listener who isn’t local to the Midlands in the UK, this podcast is actually listened to by people across Europe and the US, may not have heard of St Basils, could you tell my listener why St. Basils was set up and what the Charity does?

Barrie: Of course. So, St. Basils is a youth homelessness Charity in the West Midlands in England, set up in 1972 by a man called Les Milner who essentially ran a, I guess, what could be termed as a youth club back in the late 60s-early 70s.

He recognised there was an issue with youth homelessness amongst young men at the time, and he wanted to do something about it. So, he set up St. Basils; the reason why it’s called St. Basils was because it was set up in an old church building called ‘St. Basils’ which we still operate of to this day.

And from there it was grown into a Charity that supports around about between 4-5000 young people every single year. We’ll accommodate about 600 people per night in one of our 40+ accommodation projects throughout the whole of the West Midlands.

So, we have ‘mother and baby’ units for mums who came to us who have experienced homelessness, and yeah, our whole ethos is about preventing homelessness from happening in the first place we hope or preventing it from happening again.

Sanita: Such an amazing organisation. As someone who has volunteered and who has seen such a difference that your organisation makes, and I guess people are, or can be sympathetic to homelessness, but it’s not necessarily a cause that people think about when leaving a Legacy to a Charity.

I think it could be useful to perhaps for the listener to know what income streams that you’ve relied on before you started looking at developing a Legacy strategy.

Barrie: Yeah, by its tradition, we’ve never been a Charity that’s received an awful lot in terms of Legacies, but our traditional revenue streams would be event fundraising, so we run quite a few events at St Basils.

We do an awful lot of Trusts and grants, applications, where about 45% of our income comes from that. We have quite a few Charity of the year partnerships with businesses in the area. We have a really good reputation amongst Corporates. We also have relationships that have been long standing relationships with some schools, universities, colleges, some faith groups although, contrary to our name, we don’t get an awful lot of support from faith groups.

Legacy giving has never been something that we’ve received an awful lot from, but when we’d get them and when we have got them, they can be quite sizeable amounts of money. So yeah, we, we took the decision that, that we wanted to explore that further,  with yourself obviously. And yeah, implementing that strategy has been something which we know is going to be something that is going to be really good for the future.

Sanita: That’s great. And Barrie, you have been the actual model client in terms of, we developed the strategy and we went right back to the beginning in terms of looking at the research, looking to see what the charities are doing in this space.

And when you could have just easily gone, actually, we’re just quite happy to create our own brochure. Why did you decide that you actually needed to take those steps? And I think it’s something that would be probably useful for the listener as well to know.

Barrie: I think that the main thing for us was we wanted something to be driven by the evidence and not by gut feeling.

Now there’s a lot to be said about gut feeling and, and whether or not you think something is going to work, but because we had never done this before, we didn’t have any data or, had done any major research into whether or not this was going to be a good thing for us to do.

My job at St Basils is to explore these opportunities that we get and maximize the different ways in which we can generate an income for this Charity.  Whether it be through to traditional fundraising, having our own Charity shops or running lotteries.

So when we decided that we wanted to look at Legacies and understand that more, we wanted to make sure that what we were doing was based on the evidence. And when we did that research, or I should say Sanita, you did that research and what we saw from that is, we knew that we were effectively missing a trick, we were really missing the trick because there are charities in our sector that benefit from Legacy giving.

It was a real revelation for me when I saw that research that you did and saw some of the charities set in a similar sphere to us.

So, I’ll mention like Centrepoint as a prime example in London, that have a Legacy strategy and generate a really good income from that. That was a real shock to me because, as we said a little bit earlier on, traditionally when it comes to sort of homelessness, you wouldn’t have considered Legacy giving to be something that that would be a place where you would make much of an income from.

If I went with my gut instinct I would’ve said, “Well, it’s going to be hospices, it’s going to be cancer charities, it’s going to be those sorts of charities that will generate an income from Legacy giving.” So, to see that evidence was really important, and that’s why when we took this decision, “right if we’re going to do it at least do it properly”.

Sanita: And I think there were two things actually that really reinforced that this was the right thing for your organisation. So, when we kind of looked into the Legacies that you’d received to date, and what we’d worked out that on average each was worth £9,000. That’s what each Legacy was worth. Did that surprise you at the time?

Barrie: It did. Yeah, it really did because as a Charity, St Basils needs to raise between £1.1m – £1.2m a year. And our Charity year partnerships tend to generate on average £5-6,000 from our Charity year partnerships, and some will raise more, some will raise less but it tends to be around that average. So, when we’re seeing that we’re getting £9,000 from legacies, that’s a sizeable chunk of money for us.

I have never in my time at St Basils in this role, I’ve been here for seven years now, I’ve never forecasted for legacies.

I’ll forecast against our Corporate fundraising we’ll forecast against our Trusts and things.  We’ve never ever received consistency when it comes to legacies. I’ve never forecast against that, but it shows you that when we get them, we get sizeable chunks of money.

And, and even more recently, we got news of, of someone who sadly passed away, who was closely linked to the Charity, we are estimating that we will receive a Legacy from them of about £10,000. That’s a lot of money, so yeah it was a major surprise when I realised just how much it was.

Sanita: I guess also the point is you don’t need that much money for it to make a difference to the size of your organisation. And actually putting that into perspective in terms of your Corporate partnerships and how long it takes to build those relationships and the nurturing that has to take place during that period of time.

And I’m certainly not saying ditch your Corporate partnership program in favour of legacies. Yeah, but actually it really does show doesn’t it, how significant it could be for you.

Barrie: Oh, definitely. This is the thing, it’s that we’ve never ever forecast legacies but understanding, just the impact that in can make on the financial basis. One of the things we do, what need to be able to do is sort of track those people who have signed up to do this because the reality is, when we receive them it can come up a little bit out of the blue

I will get the phone call from the solicitors or whoever is dealing with the legacy. It can be a bit of a surprise, and sometimes those legacies are coming from people that we’ve never ever heard of or ever spoken to. Some of them will come from people who have been closely linked to the Charity, and the thing is, this whole Legacy piece was whilst we were also redeveloping our CRM system at St Basils.

So, the data that we’ve been getting from that and how rich that data can be and we’re cultivating that now and understanding those people who are those long term supporters.

A very quick example of what I’m talking about is that we have regular givers to this Charity and have been giving for a very long time, and they’ll give us £20 a month, and they’ve been doing that for 10 years. So those 20 quid a month, £120-£140 a year, over that period of time, it’s a sizeable chunk of money.

Now, what we in the past have then reached out to them and said that “Well, you’ve been a regular support of the Charity for a number of years. Have you considered perhaps, thinking about us when you’re writing your Will?”.

We we’d never have done that, but now because of the learning we’ve had from this, this process we’re actively doing that now. That is cultivating our relationship that we have with those individuals who have been supporting this Charity for a long time, and also securing our financial future, which is ultimately what we need to do.

And as I’ve said to the previous heads of fundraising for our Charity, I wish they’d started that a long time ago.

Sanita: Yeah definitely. And it’s really great that you recognise that someone who has been supporting you for a long time, it’s that natural step of wanting to reinforce that support. And you’re right, those people are going to be more likely to, but also, there are many people out there who are very sympathetic to homelessness and it’s something that we have uncovered when we looked at the on-line wills.

So Farewill who’s an on-line well provider reported back in what, 2020, that after cancer, that the most common cause supported were homelessness and the military. And that’s really quite interesting, I suppose, because of the pandemic. But did you find that your cause received more support during the pandemic? Or did you get that dip in fundraising?

Barrie: We were quite fortunate during the pandemic in many ways. I’ll never forget that day in March, 2020, when I was on a train, I was going to London to actually speak at a digital fundraising conference, which I, today, when I think about it now in I reflect upon it, it was quite ironic because every Charity, all of a sudden, had to put into place a digital fundraising strategy that we perhaps hadn’t even thought of before.

And, and I was speaking at one of these conferences because we did have the makings of a digital fundraising strategy and we’d had something that worked quite successfully for us. So, all charities to wanted to learn about it.

And I will never forget getting off that train on a Monday morning,7.30am in London, Euston, and it being a ghost town, and then realising we were going to have to cancel everything that we were doing. And to cancel our event fundraising is which is about £350,000 to £400,000 per year, potentially.

That’s the higher end, but when I add up what we would make from our sleep-out events, from our walk events, from, the various other events that go on throughout the year, that’s what would be. So, yeah, when that happened, there was a real fear that we were going to lose a lot of our income.

And so, but we did fairly well in the grand scheme of things and mainly because a lot of the Trusts stepped up at that point. But to answer to your question, yeah, we did okay. But I think one of the main drivers for it was that the pandemic taught us a lot of stuff, but one of the things that I really noticed coming out of it was empathy.

There was a real understanding from individuals who all of a sudden could relate to our cause. Now, homelessness. On the face of, it’s not very relatable to a lot of people because thankfully a lot of most people are not going to end up homeless.

But the reasons for homelessness are stuff that people can relate to.

The loss of a job, the breakdown of a relationship, the impact on your physical and mental well-being. And the pandemic had all that in overdrive. People were losing income, people’s relationships in the family were breaking down because of the extra strain put by that. There were impacts to your physical and mental well-being and, and some of the anecdotal stories that came out of it.

Even amongst like some of my own friends who would speak to me before the pandemic, and never really understood what I did for a living.

Sanita: That’s typical Barrie, in the Charity sector!

Barrie: Yeah, that was it. They just never understood it. And it’s like, well, “Why should we help homeless people? Sheila could just get a job, Sheila could just do this and that.” And all of a sudden when the pandemic hit, one friend who works high up in events, he went from organising events to having to use his van to be a delivery driver. It’s a noble profession and absolutely fine, but his income drastically dropped, and I remember speaking to him and he says, “Barrie, I finally get it, I get how easy it is for people to struggle.”

If you’d asked me this question before about where homelessness is ranked in terms of Legacy giving, it would’ve really shocked me, but when we were doing this work, it just so happened that this work was going through that period.

So, it did still surprise me to see in black and white that this was actually what was being reflected, but in the sort of anecdotal stories that I was hearing.

But yeah, because I think now that what people are beginning to understand about homelessness is that actually that the reasons for it are very, very relatable. And they do want to do ways and they do want to explore ways in which they can support. And the reality is that right now, fundraising across the board has taken a massive impact because of the cost of living crisis.

But we are still getting a lot of people who want to support us in whatever way they can, whether it be through pro-bono support, whether it be through volunteering, whatever it may be. And hopefully fingers crossed at the, the fundraising aspect of it will come back. I should say that we’re not doing badly right now.

We are where we should be. And we are where we directed to be, but there’s no doubt that when I speak to other charities that we’re all really feeling this right now, and fundraising is down.

Sanita: That’s great. It’s actually really helpful to have the overall picture of where you’ve started and the journey that you’ve been on as well. And I guess this is where Legacies can really play a part as well, I guess, within your organization.

So where perhaps you have got people that are having to step away having to stop their direct debit, whether that be a short period of time and they still want to support, they can obviously still do that through making a pledge and writing in St Basil’s in their Will.

And so we worked on a kind of army of materials, didn’t we? You’ve got a communications plan, you’ve got a vision, you’ve got some messaging and you’ve got a brochure. Can you share how you plan to use these materials?

Barrie: Yeah. It’s free fold really for us. The main thing is that we wanted to have these materials so we could engage on the level that people who are most likely to want to speak to us about Legacies would be able to get it. So, the big thing for us is that when it came to the brochure, we had took the decision for the vast majority of our communications not to print out leaflets and flyers any more.

It was more cost effective to do that way. We were finding that it wasn’t something that  people were really engaging with, and we do an awful lot of more digital stuff. But we realised that with Legacies, people wanted something physical, they wanted something to read. They wanted something to hold.

So that was quite important that we got that, and the way we intend to use that just now is that we’re engaging with our staff, and we are engaging with our long term supporters.

So that’s the first protocol. Secondly, we do talk to quite a few law firms in the area, who have been wanting to basically work with us and propose this when they’re speaking to people about their own Legacies as it were. And when they speak to the clients, as it were, when they come to and say, “Well, I want to give to a Charity, but I don’t know which Charity to give to” well, we’re able to provide them this material now, so they can actually have something physical that they can give to their clients that perhaps wouldn’t be thinking of us.

Then obviously we are doing some of that digital stuff, promoting it through our social media pages. That for me, I think that’s the main thing that, that we’ve found, especially like off the back of the, the research that you did is that the first two, or the first one I should say, are the ones where I think will get the most traction.

And more immediate as it were, I think the other stuff will probably take it a little bit longer, but as we was saying later on, these are such sizeable amounts of money for us, that if we can get, a couple of year signed up, I’d be more than happy with that.

And the other side of it as well, and this is the one which is quite interesting to us is that St Basils turns 50 this year, and this is when we look at the amount of people that we have supported over the years and where a lot of those people are now, and we’ve been talking to some of our, we call them our alumni, and the people who came through St. basils in the seventies, eighties, nineties, they are thinking about writing legacies now.

And we are at the forefront of their minds. So, this seemed like the perfect time to be thinking about this. Well, I would argue it was probably 10 years ago, but you got to start somewhere,

Sanita: But you weren’t here then Barrie.

Barrie: Well, I wasn’t here, and I would’ve had it top of my list if I had been, but there you go. But those people are wanting to engage with us with this stuff. So, these are people who have been supported by the Charity who want to do something to give back and in a meaningful way and are thinking of us sort of, it means that that we’re able to now because of the materials we’ve got, and because of the vision we have..

And I should say, at this point, and I’m selling, not doing a sales pitch for, but in the grand scheme of the work, it didn’t cost us that much money to do this, because it was very cost effective for us to employ a service like yourselves to do this, to put the strategy in place and the financial gains that we will reap from that will pay for itself tenfold.

So, it just made business sense for us to do this. And thankfully now, because we’ve got that vision and that strategy, we will see the rewards from that.

Sanita: Mm-hmm, I’m not sure how I phrase now, to say that actually I didn’t make you say that and it’s not any script whatsoever!

But yes. Thank you for recognising it was definitely a worthwhile piece of work and it was enlightening for me as well, really. And it was only as we were kind of delving in that when we, when you were talking about  the 50th, and we think actually, there are going to be people that have been helped and are probably in a really good place now.

And so, they naturally are the people that you would be going to about Legacies as well. And I think it’s quite good for the listener to hear that because often when we are dealing with, or working with very vulnerable beneficiaries, there’s a natural protection to keep them away from fundraising messages.

And that might be so depending on the beneficiaries, but these people, they’ve moved on from the organisation haven’t they, and I guess it’s about how you reconnect with them and get those messages out.

Barrie: Yeah, completely. Just where you’re saying that, it’s all about timing. The reality is that clearly, and I’m not talking about Legacy here, but some of us are dealing with incredibly young people.

Some are more vulnerable than others. Some are, in a very good place, but they’ve just been, in a situation where they have needed support because of whatever is gone in their life.

But we have, we could be dealing with some incredibly vulnerable young people and I’m not going to put those people on posters and talking about their horrendous story of why they came to us in the hope that we might make a quick pound. That isn’t right, but there does come a point when perhaps they’ve been in a service for a little while or they’re coming out of the service where the time is right. The biggest thing about what we do at St Basils is safeguarding and making sure that the support was in place for those young people.

But when the time is right and they’re happy to share their stories, then we will go with that, but that is obviously led by those young people.

Now, when it came to the Legacy stuff, we are dealing with people perhaps were helped with by St Basils 20, 30, 40 years ago and haven’t forgotten that support and what it’s meant to them and are happy to share their story and don’t get me wrong, there are people who have got help with us 20, 30, 40 years ago that find it difficult to talk about this.

So, it’s about timing and I would encourage anybody who’s depending on what Charity is, whether it’s a homeless Charity like St Basils or whatever, cause that you are representing.

I think it’s when you’re dealing with the cohort or the beneficiaries of the Charity that you work for, it’s that, “When is the time right?”

And that would be my advice. And, and you’ll find that usually there does come a point where those people are happy to talk about the support they received and also want to give back in their own way, whether that may be a Legacy, whether it be even just sharing their story of how they were benefited by the cause.

Sanita: And what’s interesting, even if it’s not the beneficiaries, it’s often the families of those beneficiaries who have seen the difference that you might have made to someone that’s really special to them. And they want to be able to give back in that way.  So, actually that might be where some of your Legacies have come from Barrie, where you haven’t been able to perhaps match them to somebody.  Whether that be a client, a service user or a donor, it could very well be a relative or, a friend of someone that you’ve supported.

Barrie: Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right,  there are some when they come through to us that we can identify, and we have thought that perhaps this was someone that was supported.

Just where you mentioned that there was one that we did get through and it did give us some details, and we found out it was the the person’s son had been supported by St Basils many years ago. But we hadn’t been able to trace anything back because the surname wasn’t matching.

And second, third, fourth level perhaps that they aren’t aware of because as you say, there’s the beneficiaries, there’s the direct beneficiaries at St Basils that are being benefited by what that we do, but actually, because of what we’re doing, it’s benefiting parents, it’s benefiting friends. It’s been benefiting other peoples in their support network.

So yeah, it just shows you that this can be far more reaching and the Legacy stuff is primarily like that. When the people are coming to write their Wills and what they want to do, and with the assets or the financial stuff that they have, they are thinking about those causes that benefit their lives and benefited the lives of the people they cared about.

Sanita: Exactly. So finally, I don’t want it to be my final question, but we’ve got to keep the episodes to some length, unfortunately.

I guess, what piece of advice would you give to my listener who might be struggling to find time to do any Legacy marketing or doesn’t really know where to begin?

Barrie: If I’ve got any advice it’s, the support that this will give your Charity will benefit you on the long run.

I totally get, I live it on a daily basis, you can get dragged into stuff. And the day-to-day stuff of working for charities, obviously that can take over. This should be something that, ultimately, isn’t just about the immediate day-to-day stuff, which I know that you are focusing on because you have to focus on that.

But ultimately your job as well is to future-proof Charity. You can do that through Legacy giving, and I would encourage anybody. If you can’t do it yourself, then get support from someone else, measure the costs and understand the data. Understand the research that’s done and see if this is something that’s going to benefit you guys in the long run.

Sanita: Sure. That’s great. Thank you so much. And Barrie, I do have to absolutely applaud you for having come out of your comfort zone and embarked on the Legacy program. I can only see your organisation is going from strength to strength because of it.

Thank you so much now.

Barrie: Thank you. As I say, well, we couldn’t have done it without you Sanita, so it’s really appreciated.

Sanita: Thank you.

So that my listener is all for this episode. What Barrie has clearly highlighted is that any Charity with a supporter base can and should build a Legacy plan. That it’s easy to get started with the right support and knowledge. And it’s totally okay to take your time to develop and implement a Legacy plan.

Do you need some support with your Legacy plans?  Here are some of the ways that I can help:

✍️ Write or review your current Legacy strategy 

📢 Set up your first Telephone Legacy campaign and run it for you

📝Legacy Events Planning

📞Coaching sessions providing guidance for your Legacy activities

🚅In-house Legacy Training across your Charity (including staff toolkits and E-learning module)

📈Interim Legacy Marketing Support

📰Create your Legacy Marketing Materials

🧓Collect Legacy Case Studies and ideas on how to use them in your marketing

Anything not listed here, you need help with?  Tell me more at sanita@persuasion.org.uk I love hearing from my listeners

Thank you so much for listening to Legacy Fundraising Chat brought to you by Persuasion, a consultancy training and coaching organisation helping fundraisers, just like you.

Thank you also for everything that you do for your cause and the Charity sector, making it an inspiring place to work.

I’m your host, Sanita Guddu championing your Legacy fundraising efforts.

P.s Could you do me a favour please?  If you are enjoying my podcast, I’d love it if you could either subscribe, share with one other person or leave a review as to why others should listen at: 

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