If you’ve watched the television recently you’ll have seen an ad from a charity asking you to remember them in your will.
And it’s no surprise. Charity giving in the UK might have suffered with the economy, but legacy giving continues to grow.
However, the data suggested that smaller charities — especially hospices — are missing out.
This is why Hospice UK’s proposal to bring 143 independent hospice charities together for a legacy campaign was so interesting. Individually, none of us have the muscle to compete — but collectively, Hospices would be, by some distance, the biggest charity in the country.
By pooling our resources, we’ve been able to deliver a campaign beyond that which any of us could ever have conceived individually.
The creative for the campaign is fantastic. It shows the breadth of Hospice care — there’s much more to life than death at a hospice — and it resonates deeply. Kudos must go to the Hospice UK project team, led by Catherine Bosworth FCMI Cmgr and the geniuses at Raw London, the agency tasked with delivering the campaign.
The job for us at St Mary’s Hospice is to convert the national campaign into local action. It would be impossible for the ad to include local hospice branding (although they did manage to squeeze all the logos in, briefly). So my team and I have worked hard to deliver a campaign that delivers a local look at the national campaign.
What we’ve done:
🟦 A social media campaign that explains why it matters
🟦 Case studies of those who’ve left us (or are planning to leave us) gifts in their wills
🟦 Advertising that combines the imagery and messaging from the national campaign with local aspects to link the two.
🟦 Secured media coverage to highlight the campaign
🟦 Ordered a huge billboard so the 100,000 pairs of eyes that drive past Hollywood Park in Barrow will see what we’re involved in.
🟦 Personalised boxes, created with Leeds-based sustainable creative agency resource | sustainable creativity, which we’re sending out to our army of regular supporters so that they know why we’re part of this campaign and feel included as part of team St Mary’s. The boxes contain everything they need to take a break, have a cuppa and watch the advert.
It’s hard to measure the success of a legacy campaign. Richard Radcliffe, the legacy giving expert we’ve worked with in recent years, tells us it’s often years before you see the fruits of your labour.
But what we do know is that we’re majorly impressed with the campaign. And we think we’ve done a good job of trying to help it resonate with local people.
Time will tell if we’re right — but for the sake of everyone who’ll need hospice care in years to come, let’s hope we are.