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FirstClass gets shortlisted as a finalist for the Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards 2024!

The FirstClass team is delighted to announce we have been shortlisted for ‘Outstanding Partner to the Legacy Sector’ at the Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards 2024, recognising and celebrating our outstanding achievement and skill in the legacy sector.


Being shortlisted for a Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Award provides FirstClass with an independent validation of our hard work and commitment to legacy giving and helps to benchmark achievements with peers across the UK. This much deserved recognition has helped boost confidence and demonstrates how we’re helping reward the skill and dedication of the people involved in this vital sector.


The award entries were reviewed and assessed by a judging panel that includes some of the biggest names from across the charitable legacies’ community. To be shortlisted as a finalist for these awards, despite tough competition from a pool of brilliant applications, is a mark of real achievement for FirstClass. The team have been selected based on matching the criteria for Ambition, Excellence, Outcome and attributing scores against a transparent system aimed at recognising and rewarding inspirational legacy teams and individuals.


FirstClass has become an industry ‘gold standard’. In many cases, its use across the UK’s diverse range of charities is regarded – perhaps unofficially – as a qualification, with those with experience of using it seen as having an additional and highly coveted skillset.

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However, FirstClass is not just used by charities and academic institutions. It’s also used by high-profile benchmarking organisations and industry authorities such as Legacy Foresight and Legacy Link. As a result, FirstClass has a reach and positive impact that goes far beyond a typical industry product or traditional supplier/customer relationship.


Yet, despite all this – and apart from those who use the system day in, day out - there is perhaps a large segment of our sector that doesn’t fully understand that the platform is, as Cancer Research UK states, ‘the beating heart of the legacy team’.


As a result, the team would like to use this award as a platform to make this highly-regarded industry tool front of mind with key stakeholders and shine a light on the good work that FirstClass has been doing since its inception in the mid-nineties.


Polly Avgherinos, Managing Director, Smee & Ford: “We extend our congratulations to FirstClass for their nomination in the at the upcoming Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards. We eagerly anticipate their presence at the April ceremony, where we will come together to acknowledge and celebrate the remarkable talent, dedication, and enthusiasm of individuals contributing to the field of legacies. Their impactful work on behalf of legators, charities, and beneficiaries deserves recognition and appreciation."


The winners will be selected following a rigorous judging stage ahead of the Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards ceremony. The full list of nominees for the 2024 Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards can be found at legacygivingawards.co.uk/finalists-2024.


The selected winners will be announced during a private ceremony at Hilton Bankside, London, on 18th April 2024.

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