Making the most of Remember A Charity Week 2016

It’s always exciting when we get to September. For the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, it marks our month long promotion of the difference supporters can make to our ability to allow those with cystic fibrosis to live a life unlimited by the condition by including a gift in their Will. Remember A Charity week takes a lot of planning; at Council level we have looked at and developed propositions, sought opinions from across charitable cause areas, developed materials and collateral, and inputted into how the campaign will work to ultimately change public perception of the importance of charitable legacy giving. We run a campaign to tie in with that of Remember A Charity. So this year, our focus was on words of wisdom. We had great celebrity support, and were able to utilise the materials provided from Remember A Charity for our internal engagement, so members of staff could share the words they would leave for future generations.

Our supporters led the way giving their words for our direct mail pack, and we tied all of this in with a free will writing service via the National Free Wills Network, to further encourage supporters to think about what they will leave behind, and to whom. We were able to promote the campaign and our work with our corporate partner, the Law Society of Scotland at their annual conference last week. And to conclude the promotion, we incorporated legacies into our everyday work, and the work of our supporters – we climbed Ben Nevis and promoted from the summit. Like most things in life, with membership of Remember A Charity, the more you put in, the more you get out. Using their materials, whether online or offline, and forward planning your activities considering your own supporter base and budgets, the week remains a fantastic way of engaging an audience in a non-traditional and fun way as to why we should all think about charities we support when writing our Will. Michael Clark, legacy and in-memory manager at Cystic Fibrosis Trust