How to Build Donor Relationships That Lead to Legacy Gifts
LAST UPDATED: October 2026
Summary: The great wealth transfer presents a significant opportunity for educational institutions. But securing future legacy gifts starts decades before the ask. Discover why lifelong alumni relationships, meaningful engagement and long-term planning matter more than ever.
How to be the institution alumni choose to leave a legacy to
The scale of generational wealth transfer now underway is staggering. In the US, Cerulli Associates estimates that $124 trillion will transfer through 2048, with approximately $18 trillion expected to go to charity. It's the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history. And charitable bequests are already growing: Giving USA 2026 estimates that US charitable bequests reached $62.19 billion in 2025, an increase of 19.7% in current dollars over the previous year.
It's easy to read that as a straightforward opportunity for schools and universities: more wealth moving, more of it potentially reaching the institutions people care about.
But the money arriving doesn't decide who it arrives for.
That's influenced by relationships built years, often decades, before anyone writes a will.
Why legacy giving decisions start years before the ask
Picture two alumni from the same graduating class, forty years on. Both remember their time fondly. Both have had ordinary, unremarkable careers, nothing close to a family fortune. Both are, eventually, going to think about what happens to what they leave behind.
The first has heard from their old school mainly through fundraising appeals, reunion invitations and an annual newsletter. The second rediscovered an old class photo a few years back, added a memory to it, reconnected with someone they’d lost touch with, and has followed what the place has become ever since.
Neither has necessarily given a significant sum to date. But one relationship has a foundation the other doesn’t.
When people eventually decide which causes deserve a place in their will, that difference may matter far more than which institution asked first or asked hardest.
The data offers a useful perspective from the institution's side too. IDPE’s 2026 benchmarking survey of UK schools found that development offices established for more than 20 years raised, on average, over four times as much annual philanthropic income as those established for 6 to 10 years (IDPE 2026 Schools’ Fundraising and Engagement Benchmarking Report).
There are several reasons why established development offices may outperform newer ones, including resources, institutional culture and established donor networks. But the figures underline something important: advancement is a long-term investment, and the relationships that support philanthropic giving cannot be built overnight.
The problem with a late-stage legacy ask
Too often, legacy giving is treated as a late-stage conversation. Someone reaches a certain age, and only then does the subject appear, perhaps as a leaflet in a newsletter or a new paragraph in an otherwise familiar fundraising email.
There's nothing inherently wrong with inviting alumni to consider a legacy gift. Making information available and explaining how a gift could make a difference are important parts of responsible fundraising.
The problem arises when that invitation is one of the few meaningful interactions an alumnus has had with their institution in years.
To the person receiving it, the sudden attention can feel less like recognition and more like a request that was waiting for the right moment. And the moment suited the institution, not the relationship.
A thoughtful legacy programme should make giving possible. But the relationship that makes someone want to give needs to exist independently of it.
What long-term donor stewardship actually looks like
Legacy giving isn't necessarily on younger alumni's radar. But by the time people reach their 40s and 50s, attitudes towards future giving can begin to change.
UK research discussed in the Hugh James, Legacy Giving Report 2025 suggests that people can become open to considering charitable gifts in their wills well before they make one.
That creates a potentially significant period between someone becoming receptive to the idea and them making a decision.
For educational institutions, the question is what happens during those intervening years.
Is the relationship growing stronger? Is the institution still relevant? Does the alumnus feel valued as part of its community, are they simply broadcast news to, or do they hear from it primarily when something is needed?
What fills the gap
The gap that decides the outcome
Openness to a legacy gift starts years before most people write a will
Younger alumni
Legacy gifts remain outside their current focus
40s and 50s
Often open to considering a pledge
Late 50s
Most people in the UK don't make a will before this point
Stages and ages: Hugh James, Legacy Giving Report 2025 (UK)
What fills the gap
Recognition that isn’t tied to gift size
Value isn’t only what someone gives financially.
It’s the volunteer who’s turned up for twenty years, the alumnus who mentors a current student, the one who always makes time for a reunion, the one who shared a memory or a photograph that helped build the archive, the one who’s gone on to do something genuinely remarkable in their career or their community, or the one who simply represents what the institution says it stands for.
None of that shows up on a donor report, but all of it deserves recognition.
The same warmth, the same invitations, the same thank-yous, the same opportunities to be featured in a newsletter or celebrated at an event.
Treating financial contribution as the only form of value worth recognising teaches a community exactly what gets noticed. And most people will never be able to test that theory with a substantial gift.
There's a philanthropic benefit to broader participation too. IDPE's 2026 benchmarking research found that 89% of UK development offices reported that at least some of their volunteers went on to become donors.
That doesn't mean volunteering inevitably leads to giving. It does suggest that meaningful involvement and financial support can develop alongside one another.
The important thing is that participation has value, whether a donation follows or not.
Consistent contact that isn’t campaign-shaped
An institution that only gets in touch during a fundraising campaign teaches alumni to expect an ask whenever its name appears in their inbox.
One that shares genuine news, asks for input rather than simply announcing decisions, marks an anniversary from someone's school days or introduces alumni to the achievements of current students offers something different.
It gives people a reason to stay interested. And this doesn't have to mean sending more communications. In fact, it may mean sending fewer, more relevant ones.
A former student who left in 1978 may have little interest in a generic update about the institution's latest facilities project. But show them a photograph of the original building, alongside the experiences of students using its replacement today, and the story becomes considerably more personal.
The difference isn't simply better segmentation. It's understanding what connects people to the institution and using that understanding to create communications worth receiving.
Specificity over appeals
Specific impact can make a powerful difference to how people respond to fundraising.
Bloomerang's 2026 Giving Signals research highlights the importance of concrete explanations of what donations can achieve, rather than relying on broad appeals for support.
For educational institutions, that principle becomes even more compelling when it connects with an alumnus's own experience.
A former bursary recipient who sees how a bursary fund is changing a student's life understands the opportunity being created because they lived it themselves.
A new sports complex may mean more to someone who can picture the pitch they played on than it does when presented simply as an investment in facilities.
This is where an institution's own archive can play a valuable role.
Being able to resurface the team photograph someone appears in, the match they remember or the classmates they shared a changing room with can turn a generic capital appeal into something connected to their own experience.
But nostalgia alone isn't enough. An alumnus may love the school they attended in 1975 while knowing very little about the institution that exists today.
The real opportunity is to connect those memories with present-day impact: showing how the values, opportunities and experiences that mattered to previous generations continue to shape the lives of students now.
It moves the conversation from what this place meant to me to what it could mean to someone else.
A sense of belonging that holds regardless of giving
A legacy gift is, for many people, a decision about what they want to remain part of.
That sense of belonging rarely comes from a single event or a well-timed letter. It develops through the experiences, relationships and values that connect someone to an institution over time.
And it should extend to everyone.
The alumnus who never attends a reunion, never responds to a survey and may never make a significant financial gift should still feel that they belong to the community.
Importantly, a relationship that has been dormant for decades isn't necessarily beyond repair.
We saw this first-hand with one school using SocialArchive. An alumnus who hadn't returned to the school in more than fifty years reconnected after identifying a former teacher in a photograph shared through the school's digital archive. That simple interaction reopened a relationship with an institution he had lost touch with decades earlier.
The alumnus subsequently chose to include the school in his will.
It's a powerful example of how shared history can bring people back into an institution's community, sometimes after an extraordinary length of time. A single photograph provided the reason to reconnect, creating an opportunity for the school to rebuild a relationship that might otherwise have remained dormant.
The relationships that matter in 2035 are being built now
There's a strategic difficulty at the heart of long-term alumni engagement.
The work that matters most for future legacy giving may not produce a measurable financial return for ten, fifteen or even twenty years.
Yet most advancement teams operate within annual budgets, campaign targets and reporting cycles that naturally favour more immediate results.
How do you justify investing time in reconnecting with alumni who may never donate? How do you measure the value of a photo identification project, a mentoring programme or an alumni community that becomes more active but doesn't immediately generate additional income?
And how do you protect those activities when budgets tighten or institutional leadership changes?
These are not simply questions about engagement. They're questions about the long-term resilience of an institution's philanthropic pipeline.
One answer is to broaden the way success is measured.
Alongside financial performance, development teams should understand how many previously inactive alumni are reconnecting, how consistently people participate over time, whether alumni understand the institution's current priorities, and how effectively relationships are maintained across different stages of life.
The foundation beneath the financial results
Four measures that show relationships strengthening, years before gifts follow
Future legacy giving
May not show a measurable financial return for ten, fifteen or even twenty years
Reconnecting
Previously inactive alumni coming back
Consistency
People taking part over time
Understanding
Alumni who know the institution's current priorities
Life stages
Relationships maintained as lives change
A growing community of alumni who contribute stories, volunteer, mentor, participate in events and maintain meaningful connections may represent an important long-term institutional asset, even when those activities don't translate directly into immediate donations.
This doesn't mean abandoning financial targets or established legacy stewardship programmes. It means recognising that those programmes depend on a much wider foundation of relationships.
And that foundation needs investment before the financial results become visible.
The institutions that are best placed for the next fifteen years may therefore be those willing to measure not only what their alumni give today, but how successfully they are maintaining relationships that will matter tomorrow.
Why stewarding current donors still matters
None of this replaces looking after the donors already closest to an institution. The same things that build a future legacy relationship, timely thanks, real updates on what a gift achieved, consistent attention that isn’t tied to the next ask, matter just as much to someone already giving.
But building for the next twenty years is a reason to extend that care further across the alumni community, not a reason to divert attention from the people already supporting the institution.
A strong advancement strategy should be able to do both.
How younger donors and alumni are giving differently
The great wealth transfer is often discussed as an opportunity to engage older donors. But it presents an equally important challenge for the generations who will inherit that wealth.
According to Cerulli Associates, Generation X and Millennials are expected to receive substantial inherited wealth through 2048, with Gen X receiving a larger share in the nearer term and Millennials becoming increasingly significant over the longer term.
But while younger generations may inherit their parents' assets, they won't necessarily inherit their philanthropic loyalties.
They'll make their own decisions about the causes and institutions they support, influenced by their own experiences, values and priorities.
For schools and universities, that creates two simultaneous challenges: maintaining meaningful relationships with older alumni today while earning the trust and loyalty of the generations who will shape philanthropy tomorrow.
And those younger generations are already participating in charitable giving.
Bloomerang's 2026 research points to the importance younger donors place on understanding where their money goes and what it achieves. Transparency, tangible outcomes and a clear explanation of impact are important considerations.
Meanwhile, IDPE's 2026 UK schools benchmarking data indicates that the proportion of philanthropic income coming from donors aged over 55 fell from 77% to 68% between reporting periods, with independent co-educational schools also reporting growth in giving from donors under 40.
Those figures don't mean that younger donors have suddenly replaced older generations as the principal source of philanthropic income. They do, however, reinforce the importance of not treating younger alumni solely as future prospects.
They are part of the philanthropic community now.
Who is giving is already shifting
Share of philanthropic income from donors aged over 55, UK schools
Older donors still give the majority. Younger donors are part of the philanthropic community now.
Source: IDPE, 2026 UK schools benchmarking
And their relationship with an institution should begin long before they have the financial capacity to make a substantial gift.
For a recent graduate, that relationship may be built through career support, professional networking and connections with former classmates.
For someone further into their career, it might involve mentoring, volunteering or sharing their experiences with current students.
For others, it may simply be the opportunity to remain connected to the people, places and memories that shaped an important part of their lives.
Building that loyalty deliberately, rather than assuming it comes automatically with the alumni label, is essential.
The institution that stays relevant to someone throughout their 20s, 30s and 40s has a very different foundation for a lifelong relationship than one that attempts to re-establish contact decades later.
And as wealth continues to pass between generations, that distinction may become increasingly important.
Why institutional memory matters for alumni engagement
There's a quieter risk to decades-long relationships that receives relatively little attention.
People leave.
Development directors retire, alumni relations officers move on, databases are replaced and institutional priorities change.
With each transition, valuable knowledge about alumni relationships can disappear.
An alumnus may have shared something meaningful with a staff member ten years ago. A volunteer may have spent years helping identify people in old photographs. A former student may have maintained close connections with classmates, teachers or particular parts of school life that aren't reflected in their official record.
If that knowledge exists only in someone's memory, it's vulnerable the moment that person moves on.
And this exposes an important distinction between managing alumni data and preserving alumni relationships.
An alumni database might tell you when someone graduated, where they live, which events they've attended and how much they've donated.
But does it tell you about the teacher who changed their life? The classmates they remain close to? The school production they still talk about?
The memories they've contributed, the photographs they've identified or the part of the institution's history they helped preserve?
Those details may be far more meaningful to the individual than anything recorded in a traditional donor profile. They also help explain why someone continues to feel connected to an institution long after their formal education has ended.
This is where preserving institutional history becomes a strategic part of alumni engagement, rather than simply a heritage exercise.
When photographs, records, stories and alumni contributions are kept searchable and accessible, they become a resource that future advancement teams can continue to build upon.
Tools such as SocialArchive help institutions preserve this shared history while giving alumni opportunities to identify people, contribute memories, rediscover connections and participate in the ongoing story of their community.
The value isn't simply that historical material is preserved. It's that the relationships and experiences behind it remain accessible and meaningful, even as the people responsible for maintaining those connections change.
Of course, preserving alumni information brings responsibilities around privacy, permissions and appropriate use of personal data. But handled thoughtfully, institutional memory can become one of the most valuable assets an advancement team has.
Legacy giving best practice: an invitation, not an expectation
Institutions hold a privileged place in many people's lives. They are connected to formative experiences, important relationships and personal achievements.
That connection deserves care.
Older alumni shouldn't suddenly receive more attention simply because they've reached an age when a legacy gift becomes statistically more likely. Nor should every interaction be interpreted as a step towards a financial commitment.
Family will rightly come first for many people. Others will choose to support causes unrelated to their education. Some won't leave a charitable gift at all.
All those decisions deserve respect.
A good legacy programme makes information available, explains the potential impact of a gift and allows people to explore their options without pressure.
A good alumni relationship goes further. It remains worthwhile whether or not someone ever gives.
Philanthropy can become one expression of that relationship. It should never be the price of maintaining it.
How to become the institution alumni choose for a legacy gift
IDPE's 2026 benchmarking research found that UK schools typically dedicate only a small proportion of development staff time specifically to legacy work, yet legacy giving represents a meaningful share of the philanthropic income they receive.
Much of the groundwork for future legacy giving happens across the wider institution. In the alumni reunion that brings old friends back together. The volunteer who is thanked properly. The former student who is invited to share their story. The photograph that reconnects someone with a teacher they haven't thought about in fifty years.
These moments accumulate. Over time, they help shape how people feel about their former institution, how closely they follow its progress and whether they still see themselves as part of its community.
For advancement leaders, the next fifteen years present an opportunity to think seriously about the relationships they want to have in place by 2040. Which alumni are currently drifting away? What reasons are they being given to reconnect? How will today's younger alumni experience the institution over the coming decades? And what investment is needed now to make those relationships last?
Nobody leaves a legacy to the organisation that asked at the right moment. They leave it to the one that was already part of their story.
SocialArchive helps schools, colleges and universities preserve their institutional history and turn it into meaningful opportunities for lifelong alumni engagement. Through searchable digital archives, personalised galleries, alumni contributions and shared memories, institutions can reconnect their communities with the people and experiences that shaped them. Book a demo here or contact us for more information.
FAQs
How can schools and universities encourage alumni to leave a legacy gift?
Schools and universities can encourage legacy giving by building meaningful, lifelong relationships with alumni. Regular communication, opportunities to reconnect with former classmates, recognition of alumni contributions and stories demonstrating the impact of philanthropy can all help maintain that connection. Institutions should also provide clear, accessible information about leaving a gift in a will, allowing alumni to explore the option without pressure. The strongest legacy giving strategies combine thoughtful fundraising with consistent alumni engagement over many years.
What is the relationship between alumni engagement and legacy giving?
Alumni engagement helps maintain the emotional connection, trust and sense of belonging that may influence someone's decision to leave a charitable bequest. Alumni who remain involved through reunions, mentoring, volunteering, digital archives or community activities have opportunities to strengthen their relationship with their former institution. While engagement doesn't guarantee a legacy gift, it helps schools and universities remain relevant throughout alumni's lives, including when they consider their long-term philanthropic priorities.
How far in advance should institutions start building relationships with potential legacy donors?
Ideally, institutions should begin building lifelong alumni relationships from the moment students graduate, maintaining them throughout different life stages. Legacy giving decisions may be made decades later, so waiting until alumni reach retirement age risks missing years of valuable relationship-building. A sustainable planned giving strategy should combine immediate alumni reconnection, medium-term donor stewardship and long-term engagement with younger generations, rather than relying solely on age-based legacy campaigns.
How can digital archives support alumni engagement and legacy fundraising?
Digital archives give alumni opportunities to reconnect with the people, places and experiences that shaped their education. Searchable photographs, historical publications, oral histories and alumni-contributed memories can encourage participation from former students who may not respond to traditional communications or fundraising appeals. Platforms such as SocialArchive also support photo identification, personalised galleries and alumni connections, helping institutions preserve shared history and maintain meaningful relationships that may contribute to future philanthropic support.
How will the great wealth transfer affect legacy giving to schools and universities?
The great wealth transfer is expected to move substantial assets from older generations to spouses, heirs and charitable organisations over the coming decades. This creates potential opportunities for educational institutions, particularly through charitable bequests supporting bursaries, scholarships, research and other institutional priorities. However, inherited wealth doesn't automatically translate into philanthropic support. Schools and universities will need to maintain relationships with older alumni while building trust and relevance among Generation X and Millennials, whose giving priorities may differ from those of previous generations.
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