Bespoke Data Solutions

Take the guesswork out of your legacy fundraising strategy

We understand legacy teams.

At Smee & Ford, we work with charities across the whole spectrum of legacies, from those with multi-million pounds of annual legacy income to those just putting together their first legacy marketing strategy.

No matter the size of the legacy team, every organisation has its own challenges. We've found that some of the most common ones include:

  • Building a case for additional investment to grow legacy programmes
  • Updating strategies using incomplete and inconsistent internal data
  • Comparing performance against peer charities, with limited or no access to detailed sector data
  • Working in small teams with increasing responsibility, leaving less time for detailed data analysis
  • Operating in a growing and highly competitive fundraising stream

Smee & Ford is unique in the world. It is the only source of totally accurate, sector-wide legacy market performance. Such information is of immeasurable benefit to all of us who are involved in understanding and promoting legacy giving. Ignore it at your peril.

note from a project:

Our intelligence empowered the charity to adjust their messaging during cold acquisition and stewardship, with a focus on differentiating their story to communicate more effectively with potential legators.

How can data help?


Using Smee & Ford legacy market data ensures you don’t base your fundraising strategy on assumptions or guesswork. It can help you forecast your potential future legacy income, identify opportunities to guide your legacy marketing strategy, and serves as solid evidence to back up your bids for investment.

Smee & Ford has the most comprehensive information available on legacy giving in the UK, now going back to 2012. Depending on your most pressing challenges, we can work in partnership with you to recommend the insight that will be most useful. This could include:

Causal area and income benchmarking
Market share intelligence
High-value legacies analysis
Legator profiling
Pledger and donor behaviour analysis
Identifying bedfellows/co-beneficiaries
Geo-mapping opportunities
Historical performance comparisons

Discover how we've helped charities

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CASE STUDY

Bedfellow and Competitive Rankings

A large UK charity wanted to understand how they compared to selected peer charities when appearing as co-beneficiaries in bequests. They believed they may have been receiving a smaller share of the estates than their peers. They were also interested in extrapolating this further to compare against peer charities when they appeared as co-beneficiaries without being mentioned.

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CASE STUDY

In-Depth Peer Analysis

A medium-sized UK charity within a causal area alongside many active smaller charities was struggling to get a clear understanding of giving across their peers. Many of the charities were receiving a small number of gifts a year, but this meant it was difficult to get a picture of what legacy giving across the cause looked like.

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CASE STUDY

Opportunity Report

A medical charity was beginning their first large-scale legacy marketing strategy. They worked mainly within two key regions and had a good presence in both, but were struggling with how to understand their opportunity, prove ROI and build a case for investment in legacies.

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How can we help you?

Do you have a legacy fundraising challenge, or are interested in understanding more about the potential for your legacy income? Simply fill out the form below and we'll be in touch for an initial discussion.