The future of legacy fundraising is bright!

Here are my notes from an excellent session presented today by Ashley Rowthorn of Legacy Futures on "The future of legacy fundraising" at the Fundraising Everywhere #LegacyFundraising virtual conference 2024. Sessions available to watch on the links above. You should be able to see the images more clearly by clicking on them. This is just a bit of flavour from one of many sessions - sign up as a Fundraising Everywhere member to see much more. We get immersed in stories and indeed facts and figures through reading Futurology is important and interesting but it’s very hard to get away from lens of today, and we tend to overreach on what technology can do for us – eg prediction in this book that Olympics will be on the moon. We need to be aware of “black swan events” – unpredicted events which have huge consequences, fall of Berlin Wall, 9/11, financial crash, Covid outbreak – all changed the course of our future radically. But can be positive, eg invention of internet. There may be others in the coming decades. It’s not about crystal ball gazing, but thinking about the broad direction of travel, what the trends are, and how we as fundraisers should adapt to that. But glacier-like slow moving trends will shape the nature of legacy giving Life expectancy has risen, more wealth, fewer having children, understanding of sexuality is changing, culture is changing – all influential when it comes to legacy giving Legacy giving has quadr