Legacy Income
Last Updated_ September 2025
Legacy income reported by charity
This chart shows the value of reported Legacy income by each charity. While we have the majority of values for more recent years, values for 2010 and 2015 have only been sourced for some of the charities.
Where charities have reported £0 they have been removed.
You can select different charities by using the drop down at the top of the chart.
Legacy income overtime
By using a consistent ‘basket’ of 38 development & humanitarian charities, for who we have data for each of the years covered, it enables us to get a clearer picture of the change in the cumulative amount of legacy income reported overtime.
Each of the bands represents one of the ‘basket’ charities, and the name & value can be seen by hovering your cursor over the bands.
We can see that from 2019 there is a slight drop before a significant increase in 2021/22 followed by more gradual increases. These more recent years differ to the overall ‘Donation & Legacy income, which fell in the past two years.
How do development & humanitarian charities compare with a ‘basket’ of some of the UK’s most loved charities.
To make the comparison we created a basket of 10 charities that rank highly in the YouGov tracker of charity popularity. The names of these charities are shown below in notes.
It’s worth noting that while the charities within the ‘development’ basket have a wide range of Legacy income values, the charities in the ‘most loved’ basket all tend to be larger in size, hence not making the comparison a true ‘like for like’.
In contrast to ‘Donation & Legacy’ income, Legacy income for the development & humanitarian charity ‘basket’ has out grown the basket of most loved charities in percentage terms. This is especially apparent over the longer time frame.
Comparing Year on Year change.
Below we can see how the cumulative value of Legacy income changes in percentage terms from the previous year, using 2019/20 as the initial year.
We see that for the development charities, after a small drop in 2020/21, we’ve seen a continual increase . In contrast the ‘much loved’ charities saw a mixed picture, with two years of growth followed by a drop on nearly 10% in the last year.
Comparing change between development and ‘much loved’ charities at an organisational level.
In the two charts below each dot represents a single charity, grouped by whether they are part of our basket of development & humanitarian charities, or our basket of chosen ‘much loved’ charities. The values represent the percentage change in the Legacy income each charity enjoyed between 2019/20 to 23/24, and 2022/23 to 23/24.
When looking at the period of 2019/20 to 2023/24 we see that the ‘much loved’ charities had a higher median growth rate, however if we look just at 202/23 then the median percentage change for the development charities was higher than the ‘much loved’ charities.
Comparing the change in Legacy income overtime
The chart below shows the percentage growth rate for Legacy income for each of the selected development & humanitarian charities. You can see the growth rate for each charity across four time frames to 2023/24.
You’ll see that the list of charities for each time frame differs as Legacy income is less populated within annual financial reporting.
Proportion of ‘Donations & legacy’ income from Legacy income
The chart looks at the proportion for each charity of their ‘Donation & Legacy’ income which is attributed as Legacy income.
When comparing our basket of development & humanitarian charities and our basket of ‘much loved’ charities, we see that the median of the ‘much loved’ charities is significantly higher than the median for the development charities.
This means that typically development charities have a lower proportion of their income coming from legacy giving. Given the nature of the legacy decision making process, this shouldn’t be a surprise!
Comparing legacy growth to ‘Donation & Legacy’ growth
The chart below compares for each development & humanitarian charity the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for legacy income to the CAGR for ‘Donations & Legacy’ income. This is for the period of 201920 to 2023/24.
We’ve highlighted four quadrants:
| Quadrant | Legacy Income | Donation & Legacy income |
| Top right | Growth | Growth |
| Bottom right | Decline | Growth |
| Top left | Growth | Decline |
| Bottom left | Decline | Decline |
Alternative view of legacy vs ‘donation & legacy’ growth comparison
This view splits the charities into three bands, based on their 2019/20 Donation & Legacy income value. It offers a more immediate understanding of whose Legacy income growth has exceeded their Donation & Legacy income.
For comparison purposes you’ll also see values for the median CAGR value for the basket of ‘much loved’ charities. Given that these charities are very well supported, the comparison is most relevant for Development & Humanitarian charities in band 3.
Where next?
Interested in In-depth Insights?
Our annual INDIGO benchmarking study provides insights to a whole new level, offering a unique opportunity for you to get in-depth data into supporter behaviours and compare your performance with similar charitiess in your market.
- What are key individual giving trends in the market?
- What channel recruitment strategies are organisations pursuing?
- How are supporter profiles changing over time?
- What levels of donor retention are being achieved?
- What is happening with single giving and conversion to Regular Giving?
- How does attrition differ across markets by channel?
Notes.
- In some cases a legacy value reported in one year is revised slightly the following year. For consistency we report on the non revised values.
- In some cases a charity may include an indication of ‘legacy pipeline’ values yet to be realised. These are not included within our values.
- The charities within the ‘much loved’ basket are:
- Alzheimer’s Research UK
- British Heart Foundation
- Cancer Research UK
- Great Ormond Street Hospital
- Macmillan Cancer Support
- MIND
- The National Trust
- NSPCC
- RNLI
- The Guide Dogs for the Blind