The final outcome of charitable bequest gift intentions: Findings and implications for legacy fundraising

Charitable bequest gifts are important to charities but evaluating legacy fundraising activities is problematic. These activities may not generate bequest income until many years later. Thus, many charities focus on generating reports of current plans or intentions for bequest gifts. Such approaches depend on the link between these reports and ultimate bequest transfers. However, this link is not well documented. This study presents the first multi-organisational results linking ultimate estate distributions with lifetime legacy giving plans or intentions reported to charities. Ten Australian charities provided data from those dying in 2014–2017. Among 700 decedents who had confirmed the presence of a planned bequest gift to the charity, 35% generated no estate gift. This lost gift rate varied from 17 to 60% across different organisations. The average loss rate was 24% when the charity had at least one communication with the decedent within 2 years of death, and 48% otherwise. Among 264 people reporting to the charity that they were “intending” or “considering” an estate gift but not confirming it, 89% left no gift at death. Among 507 people only requesting information about making a bequest gift, 95% left no gift at death. These results suggest the importance of moving donors to the point of planned gift confirmation and then maintaining relationships until the end of life. However, marketing remains challenging given that 58% of the 2,682 total bequest gifts received by these organisations came from decedents who were not donors during life.     

At What Age Do You Expect to Retire? Retirement Expectations and Increases in the Statutory Retirement Age

We analyse the extent to which an increase in the statutory retirement age affects individuals' retirement expectations. Understanding how individuals adjust their expectations is crucial to the evaluation of this policy, since retirement expectations directly affect other important decisions such as labour supply, engagement in (further) education and, of course, savings and investments. We consider the 2007 German pension reform that legislated an increase in the statutory retirement age from 65 years to 67. Our analysis is based on a longitudinal study that directly asks respondents at what age they expect to retire. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach, we look at the changes in subjective retirement expectations over time and estimate the extent to which they can be attributed to the 2007 reform. We find that the reform shifted the retirement expectations of the younger cohorts, although there is some heterogeneity in the way individuals adjusted. While there are no significant differences between men and women, lower‐educated individuals failed to revise their expectations. As these individuals usually acquire both lower pension claims and lower private savings, the fact that they have been slower in updating their retirement expectations causes concern regarding their income security after retirement.