Questions regarding LEAVE A LEGACY™ National

What is the purpose and mission?
LEAVE A LEGACY™ is a North American multi-year, collaborative public awareness and education campaign which brings a community’s nonprofit organizations, legal, financial and estate planning advisors and local funders together to educate the general public about the need for charitable giving and to encourage members of the general public to establish charitable gifts within their estate plans.

The purpose of LEAVE A LEGACY™ is to promote the development of financial resources for a great variety of nonprofit organizations by encouraging a type of philanthropy, which allows even people of modest means to make much larger gifts than they might have considered possible. With financial support from community and private foundations, corporate giving programs, professional firms and associations, and nonprofit organizations, the local LAL programs reach out to individuals through various mass media and already-established media outlets of local nonprofit organizations and professional associations. LAL programs also offer speaker's bureaus, wills clinics, seminars and other services to enhance charitable estate and gift planning.

This kind of approach to broad-based marketing is generally cost-prohibitive for most individual nonprofit organizations. Therefore, each local and/or statewide program seeks to develop a community-wide consortium of local charities, professional advisors, and grant-making organizations to increase the average number of estate “legacy” gift pledges for all charities. There are currently over 150 active community based LEAVE A LEGACY™ programs throughout the country. The LEAVE A LEGACY™ movement has developed into the largest collaborative effort among non-profit organizations and professional advisors in the country’s history.

The mission of the National LEAVE A LEGACY™ program is to increase the rate at which charitable estate gifts are planned and made across North America. It accomplishes its mission by promoting the LEAVE A LEGACY™ name, logo and message and by providing training and materials for local LEAVE A LEGACY™ organizers.

What is the vision?
LEAVE A LEGACY™ will be a well-known concept across North America. More and more people from all walks of life will have established charitable estate plans to leave lasting legacies in local communities. LEAVE A LEGACY™ will become part of the North American vocabulary and charitable gift planning will be a standard part of most estate plans.

When was it started and who’s behind it?
The National Committee on Planned Giving is the professional association for people whose work includes developing, marketing, and administering charitable planned gifts. Those people include fundraisers for nonprofit community institutions and consultants, as well as professional (donor) advisors working in a variety of for-profit settings.

The NCPG was formed in 1988 as a federation of planned giving councils to facilitate, coordinate and encourage the education and training of the planned giving community, and to facilitate effective communication among professional (donor) advisors in the community.

In 1996, the National Committee on Planned Giving adopted the LEAVE A LEGACY™ program, which began in Columbus, Ohio to “promote the dissemination of information about planned gifts through local councils.” The NCPG promotes LAL by providing start-up and support materials and by training volunteers of local LEAVE A LEGACY™ programs, often, though not exclusively, through local planned giving councils. The NCPG produced a video about the Columbus program, offers a how-to kit for local LAL programs, collects and disseminates samples from local programs, organized a national conference for LAL organizers, and established a LAL listserv and Web site.

NCPG has over 140 local chapters nationwide with over 12,000 members. For more information contact: The National Committee on Planned Giving, 233 McCrea Street, Suite 400, Indianapolis, Indiana 46225, Phone (317) 269-6274, Fax (317) 269-6276, email: ncpg@iupui.edu