Question for anyone in the charities/fundraising sector

[MammaMia12345]

Posting this under 'work' as there doesn't appear to be a philanthropy board on mumsnet. I hope someone can advise me.

I'm the executor of an estate where the person who died wanted to make some bequests to charity. In a nutshell, I am in control of a pot of cash which I'm keen to distribute to good causes, but so far have failed miserably!

Would love some insights from anyone in the inside or equally anyone with experience of giving to charity.

Essentially about a week ago I sent 5 emails to 5 UK charities, some large, some small/grass roots, across a range of causes that the deceased was interested in (poverty, health, education, music and art).

I explained that the donation amount would be £200k in each case, and that we would be in a position to send the cash in the next few weeks, and can they please send bank details and any forms needed.

So far I have heard NOTHING from ANY of the charities.

I'm annoyed at the lack of response and wondered whether anyone had any insight into why nobody has replied.

I hate to equate a charity being disorganised with their admin as being somehow undeserving or also likely to be disorganised with the causes they support. I appreciate that so many charities are under resourced or run by volunteers. But I think if someone comes to you with a bunch of cash and no other demands than a request for bank details then as a minimum the charity should have someone monitoring the inbox and responding.

At this stage I'm not minded to chase up my emails as I have full discretion over which charities I do pick. But please tell me if I'm sounding like a spoiled brat and should be more understanding. Perhaps I'm judging the not for profit world through the same lens as the private sector? Or perhaps the charity sector ought to be more like the private sector?

Really appreciate any guidance.

I used to work for a charity as a fundraiser and frankly I would have bitten your hand off, I would have asked for your number and called to tell to you. And then I would have invited you to visit or offered you something as a thank you (I worked for a wildlife charity, so maybe a naming or an adoption or some such). I checked my emails daily.

Email can be tricky though, especially if it’s gone to a generic inbox. I would recommend finding someone from the fundraising department or calling. Many charities are struggling right now, especially the smaller ones, and if I had the opportunity like you it is the smaller charities I would choose, that amount of money would have gone so far for the charity I worked at.

They probably think it’s a scam.
Normally they would be sent a copy of the will by the solicitor where the gift is listed and names them as a beneficiary.

It’s very heavily regulated so the due diligence and compliance is really relevant and important.

are they named as charities or is it at your discretion?

You will almost certainly need to prove who you are with ID and so on before they can accept anything. I’d get the solicitor you’ve been working with to manage this with you.

Wow that’s a big donation for any charity to be offered - I don’t know why they’re not over the moon and replying immediately!
Two possibilities spring to mind (over and above the pressures of running a charity with few pt staff or volunteers) - could your emails have gone into junk or spam as they’re offers of money with no preamble? Or do you think the charities just think it’s too good to be true?

I work for a small local charity and although we’ve only got a few part time staff all mailboxes are monitored. It might be worth calling them to explain why you’re needing to get in touch, then they’ll look out for your email when it comes in?

A lot of charities are very efficient run, especially the smaller ones that have a more direct decision making process. Maybe focus on them first?

Good luck!

In my experience a sum of money like that would have to be investigated to prove it's not fraudulent or earnings from criminal activity. It's definitely not as simple as "thanks, here's our bank details."

Also I'm wondering if your email has been blocked or flagged as potential phishing.

Personally I'd call the charities and have a conversation over the phone to find out their policies for accepting such a large donation.

It sounds a bit like a spam email. You would be better calling the head office or splitting between a few charities.

They probably think it is a scam, if it has even got through their spam filters.

I would keep your message simpler -

I would like to speak to someone at your charity about making a donation. This would be on behalf of a deceased relative who was passionate about your cause.

Fundraising coordinator here. Yep, for a small charity, that's a transformational amount of money and it's likely to be assumed as phishing or spam.

Even for grants 1% of that size there can be many hoops to jump through so this would flag as too good to be true.

If you're looking for other small education related causes with WONDERFUL fundraising coordinators who answer their emails extremely quickly, send me a message 🤭😜

In all seriousness I hope you're able to reach the causes you want to, what an incredible gift to those charities.

I work in a medium sized charity - which covers some of the areas you mention.

Who are you sending the email to? Generic email addresses are often barely monitored and we also have very hardcore firewalls so much is marked as spam.

Agree with PPs - due diligence has to be done to ensure that this is genuine and not eg money laundering / charity washing. It is vanishingly rare in my experience to get a six figure legacy or gift from an individual who has had no previous contact with the charity. These sorts of emails will raise suspicion.

Look up the charity's CEO, Head / Director of Fundraising or Development (or Legacy manager) and phone them. Say you want to arrange a meeting and ensure you have all the paperwork with you - wills, bank accounts, ID.

Good luck - this sort of money will make a charity absolutely delighted - regardless of how big they are.

I’m a fundraiser for a small charity and if I’m honest I’d be a little suspicious of an email out if the blue asking for our bank details for a large donation which would almost cover our running costs for a year.

As pp have suggested could you call them and arrange to meet with them along with the paperwork?

Odd that the deceased was so keen to leave to charity but left it to someone else to choose which ones they fancied!

Yep. I probably would have filed this as spam / scam sadly. It’s probably worth reaching out to a human first, or calling someone.

I work for a small local charity - a donation that big would almost double our annual income! An unsolicited email… well we probably would follow it up (okay, we definitely would) but we’d all be thinking scam and also wondering how we could logistically handle such a donation.

A more usual route if you have that much money to give is to set up a trust of some kind that will give grants of money to charities that fit your requirements - these can be closely controlled by you or run entirely on your behalf (often by a different charity not a profit taking entity). I can point you towards these set ups if you want.

The charity I work for get many small grants from trusts set up to dispose of money left in wills. And they are greatly appreciated and super low admin cost to us! (As opposed to a single large donation from a private estate)

I would say your email has gone to spam. Can you give them a ring?

I’ve asked DH who founded and voluntarily runs a charity, which you may be interested in. He said many charities work with CAF who have been sending out lots of warnings recently about scam donors and fraud generally, so it may be your request for bank details has set alarm bells ringing. That doesn’t excuse the lack of acknowledgment though.
Secondly, smaller charities are run by volunteers and that can delay communication as well as decisions of magnitude, such as a response to this sum being offered, which is incredibly generous.
CAF can administer the bequest for you, if you want that option too, so they may be worth investigating.
I’m going to PM you details of the small charity I’m referring too. A sum of half that amount would make a massive difference to their work.

Thank you so much for your words of wisdom. I disclosed the amount in my emails to the charities because I felt that the messages would be taken seriously, but it sounds like it has almost certainly backfired! I appreciate your suggestions and will take the time to call each of them. One of the charities is a very wealthy university and so I do feel like donations of this level from alumnae would be pretty standard, but who knows... Part of the issue I have is that being an executor has taken up a huge amount of my life, and that contacting the charities was just another thing on the to do list. Because of this, my initial instinctt was that I'd rather not have to attend lots of meetings or do much more than arrange to send the cash. But reading your messages has reminded me that it's a privileged position that I find myself in. Thank you!

I agree with other posters. It’s likely that your emails haven’t penetrated a firewall. Or they’re sitting in a spam box.

i work for a charity and get emails offering money that are blatant scams about every week. I’m sceptical about all unsolicited donations.

The Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Practice instructs fundraisers to conduct due diligence on all donations.

that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t immediately reply to your email if I had seen it. I’d have acknowledged the offer and thanked you for your interest in the charity. I’d then look to develop a relationship with you so that I could meet your expectations around what you’d need in return for your generosity.

the mantra I live by is ‘thank before bank’, ie get to know you, understand your motivation and meet your needs before i process your cheque.

Just adding to what almost everyone else thinks.
The way you phrased it makes it sound like a scam.

Even if it got through scam filters (unlikely) then an overworked member of staff or Volunteer would roll their eyes and probably not prioritise contacting you as it would be assumed to almost certainly be a waste of their time.

I work with a small charity that supports people with severe mental illnesses by providing creative opportunitirs. A few years ago, i had an email from someone saying she'd found us on Just Giving because her sister - an artist- had died in connection with a mental health issue and her 8 year old son wanted to do a sponsored bike ride in her memory. Our charity just fitted their bill. Nothing like this had ever happened to us and i thought it was too good to be true, so I arranged to chat with them, they were lovely and the boy did his bike ride and paid us the sponsorship money, which we used to actually save people's lives. It was magical really. I'm surprised you didn't get any response OP, and that's upsetting too, given the circumstances. I think some charities have lessons to learn about how they treat their donors, regardless of the risk of scammers.

I just want to add one more thing - please don't judge worthiness on the size of a charity. A small charity might well be overwhelmed by a donation this size and if they are volunteer run may not have the resources to manage it and the reporting and due diligence. You have to think about whether they have the means and programmes to invest it wisely.

NB: a £200,000 donation will always be significant whether it's a major university, Cancer Research or the local string quartet.

This may be of interest (double the impact) https://donate.biggive.org

Have you approached CRUK? They are a brilliant charity and the work the scientists do in their research is amazing!

This is an example of what would need to be discussed by the board, and potentially by others. Various other legal practices have versions of this advice, but this was a good summary - scroll down to the 3 sets of blue links which are what's expected to have been addressed to the satisfaction of the charity regulators. Universities will have a related, but different, set of regulators to comply with)
UK Charity Due Diligence & Compliance Checklists

From the charities I have been involved with, if they are run by a board, it would be very unusual that one recipient would be able to make the decision to accept without discussion. Many donors attempt to put conditions or restrictions on the funds they want to give; on the other hand, a number of charities would probably want to discuss or negotiate with the donor the plans that they would have to use or invest money before embarking on going ahead.