An increasingly popular way to support the charity of your choice is to leave a bequest in your will. But with its intimations of mortality, the gesture can be a delicate subject to raise

Cerro Pando (meaning “Wonky Hill”), a hilltop village in Nicaragua, is home to a project, supported by the aid agency Cafod, that is is training young people to become teachers. The village, cut off completely when the nearby river swells during the rainy season, is too remote to attract experienced teachers, so it must raise its own. The project exists because of a legacy left to Cafod in the will of a long-term supporter, Majorie van den Bosch. Her granddaughter, Kate, a teacher herself, visited the village to see the opportunities that Marjorie’s donation had created. “Seeing Cafod’s work at first-hand has helped me appreciate why my grandmother left a legacy. I now know it was absolutely the right thing to do – a brilliant continuation of her support,” she said.

Legacy giving – which means writing a gift, or a bequest, to an organisation in your will – is a vital area of support for charities and churches. In 2014, the annual income from charitable legacies rose by 8 per cent, from £2.044 billion to £2.208bn, according to a report by legacy advisers Smee & Ford. That figure is forecast to grow to £5.2bn over the next 40 years as the “baby boomer” generation reach the end of their lives. Smee & Ford also found that more charities than ever are benefiting from donations – an increase of 29 per cent since 2007 – and that donors are giving a higher proportion of their estates to charity.
This comes at a time when individual donations to charities – a monthly direct debit or a one-off donation to a chugger on the street – are falling. According to a report released by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) last week, they have fallen to their lowest level for seven years – by £500m last year, to £9.6bn.