Legacy funds, established through wills and bequests, remain one of the most significant yet underused opportunities available to community foundations. By enabling donors to support causes beyond their lifetime, they create a bridge between present-day generosity and future community needs. At a time when Europe is entering what is expected to be the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history, legacy giving becomes a strategic question for the field.
For community foundations, legacy funds are not only a source of financial sustainability, but also a way to strengthen their role as long-term stewards of local development and shared vision. However, unlocking their full potential requires intentional strategy, patience, cultural sensitivity, and sustained relationship-building.
The reflections below draw on insights from the second webinar of the ECFI Fund Development Learning Journey, with contributions from Susanne Hauswaldt (Braunschweig Bürgerstiftung) and Gianluca Vacchini (Fondazione Comunità Novarese).
A long-term lever (but do not rush it)
Legacy funds contribute directly to the endowment-building strategies of community foundations. Unlike short-term donations, they provide stable, long-term resources that can support community needs in perpetuity. This is particularly important for foundations that, over time, grow from small, project-based organisations into more complex actors managing multiple initiatives towards a common vision.
As highlighted by the experience of the Braunschweig Bürgerstiftung, legacy giving can help address a structural challenge: the growth of successful projects and approaches often outpaces available resources. Endowments built through bequests offer a way to sustain and scale impactful work without relying solely on annual fundraising cycles.
At the same time, wider societal trends are shifting. In many European countries, a significant portion of wealth will be transferred without direct heirs. In many cases, these assets revert to the state. Community foundations are uniquely placed to offer an alternative: a trusted, locally rooted vehicle through which individuals can ensure their assets continue to serve their community.
And yet, timing matters. For newer community foundations in particular, the advice is clear: do not rush. Conversations around legacy giving require a foundation of trust that can only be built over time and approached with care, having proved the community foundation’s value and impact on the ground.
From giving to stewardship
In an increasingly competitive philanthropic landscape, clarity of purpose is essential. What community foundations offer through legacy giving is not simply another route for charitable donations: it is a different proposition altogether.
Many charities invite individuals to leave a gift in their will to support a specific cause or organisation. Community foundations, by contrast, offer something fundamentally different: the possibility to preserve a donor’s legacy within a place. Rather than directing a one-off donation to a single beneficiary, the foundation commits to stewarding the bequest over time, ensuring it responds to evolving local needs while remaining aligned with the donor’s intentions.
This model positions the community foundation as a long-term intermediary, a buffer between the estate donation and the end beneficiaries. Through this role, it can:
- Adapt funding to changing community priorities
- Support multiple causes over time rather than a single organisation
- Leverage additional resources by pooling funds and co-investing
- Work across sectors and issues, addressing complex challenges in an integrated way
Unlocking Untapped Potential
Despite this potential, legacy giving remains underdeveloped in many contexts. Cultural barriers, legal complexity, and lack of awareness all play a role. Cultural sensitivities, legal complexity, and simple lack of awareness all play a part. In countries such as Germany, discussing wills and inheritance is often perceived as sensitive or even taboo. As a result, many potential donors never consider including a charitable component in their estate planning.
Community foundations must therefore take a proactive, yet careful approach. This involves not only communicating the opportunity but also normalising conversations around legacy planning and making the process accessible.
The Braunschweig Bürgerstiftung offers a useful example. Rather than relying on campaigns alone, it has developed a more rounded strategy to bring legacy giving closer to people’s everyday lives. This includes:
- Public events and education: Participation in initiatives such as the Braunschweig Inheritance Law Day, as well as the launch of regular sessions titled “Everything in order?! No need to fear wills, powers of attorney and advance healthcare directives.” These events demystify legal processes and create safe spaces for discussion.
- Access to professional advice: Free, one-time consultations with specialist lawyers lower the threshold for individuals to take the first step in estate planning.
- Digital tools: Providing a free online testament tool helps individuals draft a legally secure will, addressing both practical and psychological barriers.
Alongside this, more creative and informal approaches, like publications, community initiatives, even a forthcoming sudoku booklet, help build familiarity over time and reach beyond traditional audiences.
Building Trust and Navigating Sensitivity
Legacy giving is fundamentally about trust. Donors are not simply making a financial decision; they are entrusting an organisation with their values, their memory, and their long-term vision for the community.
This makes legacy fundraising particularly sensitive. As noted in experiences from Central and Eastern Europe, overly proactive or poorly handled approaches to legacy giving can damage a community foundation’s reputation or create tensions with families. In some cases, bequests have been challenged legally by relatives, placing foundations in difficult positions.
Striking the right balance is therefore essential: being present and visible, without appearing to pursue legacies too actively. Considered effective approaches include:
- A relational, long-term perspective: Recognising that donors may take years to decide and focusing on building trust rather than securing immediate commitments.
- Transparency and accountability: Demonstrating clearly how funds are managed and how donor intentions are respected over time.
- Discretion and respect: Ensuring that conversations around legacy giving are handled with sensitivity, particularly in moments linked to personal or family considerations.
- Partnerships with trusted intermediaries: Collaborating with notaries, lawyers, and financial advisors, who can introduce the option of legacy giving in appropriate contexts.
As Gianluca Vacchini suggests, this also means something quite simple: being where people are. Community foundations build trust not through campaigns alone, but through their presence in the everyday life of their communities.
Enabling Conditions and Practical Challenges
What emerged from the conversation is also that building a legacy fund strategy requires more than communication: it requires enabling conditions and internal readiness.
Key elements include:
- Professional infrastructure: Legal expertise, clear procedures, and the ability to manage complex estates, including the option to refuse inheritances when necessary.
- Accessible entry points: Opportunities for individuals to explore legacy giving without commitment, such as free consultations or informational sessions.
- Consistent communication: Light-touch, ongoing visibility through materials, events, and partnerships, rather than one-off campaigns.
There are also structural realities to contend with. Legacy giving operates on long time horizons. Outcomes are uncertain, both in timing and in scale. And without a clear strategic framework, there is a risk of fragmentation.
For many, this points towards the idea of a shared “fund for the future”: a way of ensuring that individual legacies contribute to a broader, coherent vision for the community.
Conclusion
In the coming decades, the scale of wealth transfer in Europe represents a significant moment for the field. Legacy funds offer a way to translate this moment into long-term, place-based impact.
What community foundations bring to this space is not simply their ability to receive bequests, but their capacity to steward them, holding together donor intent, community needs, and a longer-term perspective on change.
Approached thoughtfully, legacy giving can become more than a funding mechanism. It can be an expression of intergenerational solidarity: a way of ensuring that the values and commitments of today continue to shape the communities of tomorrow.
