If you are a legacy or fundraising manager in the UK charity sector right now, you are probably familiar with the tension: how do I secure immediate income while also nurturing my long-term pipeline?
To understand the health of the charity sector in 2026, fundraisers must look at both the latest CAF UK Giving Report, which highlights a decline in regular donations, and the Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Report 2026, which reveals a highly resilient £4.4 billion legacy market.
At first glance, it may seem that these reports should be looked at in isolation, but they shouldn’t. The CAF report tells you how your relationship with your supporters is right now, whereas the Smee & Ford report tells you how healthy your relationship was with donors 15 years ago.
The critical bridge joining these two reports is supporter stewardship. When read together, they describe and map the lifelong journey of a single donor relationship. To build true cross-stream financial resilience, charities must understand that the ultimate threat to future income isn’t a lack of donor generosity, but a lack of long-term stewardship.
The regular giving stewardship challenge: unlocking committed supporters in the shorter-term
This timeline is heavily impacted by the economy, inflation, and immediate cost-of-living squeezes. When the CAF report shows a drop in regular donors, it’s reflecting the immediate pressure on the public’s wallets. Over the last decade, the UK donor pool has shrunk by approximately 6 million people, with an estimated 2.8 million individuals cancelling their regular donations entirely due to affordability pressures.
For many charities, the knee-jerk reaction to this deficit is to slash long-term budgets or ramp up short-term acquisition to replenish the pool of regular givers. We are seeing more of our clients put additional focus on regular giving, especially in these tough times, as it’s seen as a more valuable, steady source of income. But the reality is that acquiring new, committed donors isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Your regular givers are connected to and committed to your cause; they might just not have the cash to give right now. So, what can you do to ensure your cause doesn’t miss out on vital funds?
The 2026 data tells us that giving is becoming more conditional and selective. Donors are tightening their belts, but they are still entirely willing to step up for transparent, highly personal, or urgent causes on their own terms.
This is where stewardship must step in to maintain the relationship. If a supporter needs to cancel or lower their monthly direct debit due to economic pressure, a purely transactional charity walks away. A stewardship-first charity recognises this as a pivot point in the relationship.
Stewardship means efficiently engaging those with an existing personal connection, offering flexible, low-friction ways to stay involved and treating a paused gift with deep empathy. If you abandon the donor when they pause their gift, you guarantee they will never enter your long-term pipeline. There is also the possibility of exploring middle value giving with this supporter base. By developing a compelling mid-value proposition, you can upsell your supporters who have the money into more committed financial support.
The long-term stewardship challenge: nurturing your legacy pipeline
The incredible £4.4 billion in legacy income we are seeing today is a result of decisions made by legators decades ago. It is the long-term harvest of previous, effective legacy stewardship.
The latest Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Report highlights the number of charitable estates held steady at 44,000, with an average of nearly three gifts per will. Interestingly, the data debunks the myth that the more charities in a will means a smaller piece of the pie for everyone. The average gift size for those leaving two gifts in their will is £46k compared to an average of £40k for those who left charitable gifts to three to five charities.
When we speak to our clients’ pledgers during qualitative research, they often share with us that they have left gifts in their wills to a number of causes. They don’t view charities as competitors, but rather see the gifts in their will as a final expression of their values by continuing to support the causes close to their hearts.
It’s not an either/or when it comes to legacy gifts in a pledger’s will; you don’t need to fight each other to be the only one. You have two main objectives here; one should be to ensure prospective pledgers care enough about your cause and your mission to list you as a beneficiary in the first place. The second main objective is to maintain a close connection to make sure you don’t get written out before the will reaches probate.
The key to both timelines are your supporter journeys
Another critical insight shared in the Legacy Giving Report is the audience focus for the next generation of legacy pledgers: Generation X (born 1965–1980). This cohort represents a massive future pipeline who are asset-rich and, interestingly, those who do have wills show a higher intent to include charities than Boomers did at the same age.
But if we cross-reference this with the CAF report, a fascinating behavioural pattern emerges.
The CAF report explicitly notes that giving is no longer a “habitual cultural norm” in the UK, and this shift is hitting Gen X directly. This age group is driving the trend toward conditional and selective giving. They are highly sceptical of traditional, blind loyalty to charity and are likely to pause or cancel a regular direct debit when financial pressures mount.
What makes this a critical moment for your strategy is that Gen X are writing their wills now. Because the average age of will-making has shifted younger, to around 50 years old, this cohort is actively sitting down to map out their estates today. If your charity waits until this audience reaches retirement to talk to them about legacies, you will have missed the boat entirely.
To be positioned for consideration, charities must invest in building meaningful, trust-based relationships with Gen X before and during this vital will-writing window. We can’t rely on passive, automated marketing; we have to actively earn their selective loyalty today so that when they put pen to paper, your cause is top of mind.
For Gen X supporters who have already written their wills, the document is far from locked in. Over the next two to three decades, these wills are likely to be amended, rewritten, and updated multiple times as their lives, families, and assets change. If your charity adopts a transactional ‘set and forget’ approach to pledgers, you create a dangerous relationship gap. Without ongoing engagement, there is a strong risk that you will be dropped from the final draft.
The key to overcoming this vulnerability is to shift from tactical marketing to long-term pledger stewardship journeys that actively nurture and maintain a close relationship over decades. But you cannot design an effective long-term journey without really knowing your audience. The essential first step is to invest in truly understanding your Gen X supporters through a detailed, dedicated audience insight piece. By uncovering exactly what this generation wants, values, and expects from a charity, you can build bespoke stewardship journeys tailored to sustain their selective loyalty. This ensures your cause doesn’t just make it into the first draft but remains meaningfully positioned in every iteration over the next 10 to 20 years.
In summary
The donor decisions that will dictate your charity’s survival in 2050 are being made by 50-year-old Gen Xers right now. They are writing their wills today, but their loyalty is fragile, conditional, and spans decades. If you treat them transactionally, you will be dropped from the final draft.
The ultimate takeaway for your leadership team is clear: protect today’s relationships with empathy, invest in deep audience insights to understand what Gen X truly expects from you, and build robust, decades-long stewardship journeys. By taking care of your supporters through today’s economic squeeze, you secure your charity’s harvest for tomorrow.
How Consider can help
At Consider, we help legacy and fundraising teams bridge the gap between these two operational timelines by placing insight-driven stewardship at the heart of everything you do. For the shorter-term timeline, we help you design modern, flexible and deeply personal journeys that match how donors actually want to interact with you. We work with our clients to develop positive experiences for new donors that drive immediate engagement and act as a natural stepping stone to future commitment.
For the long-term pipeline, we don’t just build isolated legacy marketing campaigns; we design robust, multi-decade stewardship journeys. We help you create creative, engaging communication strategies tailored to keep a Gen X legacy audience connected, feeling valued, and inspired throughout the years between their initial pledge and the final draft of their will.
Get in touch with the strategy team at Consider today to review your stewardship journeys and foster lasting relationships that fuel your legacy pipeline.
