FirstClass sends iconic college’s legacy programme to the top of the class

The background


Imperial College London (Imperial) is a world-leading university for science, technology, engineering, medicine and business.


It was founded in 1907 with a mission to use science to try to understand more of the universe, and improve the lives of more people in it.


Viewing science as more than simply a subject but a mindset, a bias for inquiry and action, and the pursuit of knowledge and new ideas with grit, humility, creativity and courage, Imperial now has a number of campuses throughout London and the South East of England.


With total charitable income amounting to £60m a year, £5m of which originates from bequest giving, the legacy team decided that it was time to accelerate its legacy programme in order to boost legacy-related revenue. 


Yet, with a legacy management infrastructure historically built around manual methods using a combination of spreadsheets and CRM, the legacy team established that this was not enough to effectively maximise the value of its estates.


In order to do this whilst futureproofing its legacy management capabilities, increasing revenue and improving the efficiency of the legacy management team, Imperial chose FirstClass – making it the first educational institution ever to incorporate the platform.

“Prior to integrating FirstClass, we were doing what we could with what we had, but it was quite basic. In terms of recording data, we were limited to the essentials. In order to establish the fundamentals, such as average gift size or whether a gift was pecuniary or not, we had to work really hard and piece the data together manually in order to get what we needed. Since adopting FirstClass, this level of data – and so much more – is available at our fingertips.”


Katharine Palmer, Legacy Officer at Imperial College London

The project:


Having used FirstClass in a previous role at a prominent UK charity, Katharine’s manager, Anna Wall, joined Imperial with a clear vision that FirstClass needed to be part of the legacy team’s evolution. However, legacy marketing and the establishment of a legacy programme needed to take priority before FirstClass could be implemented.


Although one thing that every member of the organisation was clear on was that bequests represented a huge opportunity for the organisation. The figures reflected this, too.


When the legacy programme was established in 2015, legacy income stood at £1m a year. Having grown year-on-year over nine years to £5m, it was becoming clear that spreadsheets and CRM alone were not enough to manage this level of income – let alone grow it.

“Whilst legacy income was growing as the programme grew, it was clear that it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage using manual methods. After demonstrating to the wider team what was possible when using FirstClass, the decision was taken to invest in the system – and nobody has looked back. The Advancement Division, under which legacy management falls, highly values data. Now we can provide them with as much as they want including how we compare against our peers.”


Katharine Palmer, Legacy Officer at Imperial College London

With a desire for data to drive the team’s growth, which was difficult using the previous approach, the decision was taken to implement FirstClass in 2023. In February 2024, Imperial switched to FirstClass as the system went live. 


Looking ahead, Imperial is now focussed on using FirstClass to:


  • Become more efficient in communicating with the organisation’s legacy consultants, and, through the platform’s ability to streamline and standardise processes, ensure that every member of the legacy team is consistent in their approach to legacy management.


  • Make external auditing a more straightforward and less time-intensive exercise. Prior to implementing FirstClass, data was often questioned by the auditors as it wasn’t being presented in the correct format. Now, the data will be standardised and quickly accessible.


  • Consolidate and store all data, much of which originates from different sources – such as Smee & Ford – in one easy-to-use platform.

“Even within the first week of launch, our lives became much easier. From having to manually input everything on Raiser’s Edge, all correspondence now goes straight into FirstClass. But it’s not just day-to-day legacy management that’s become so much easier, the onboarding process was seamless, too. The FirstClass team helped us choose the right solution, assisted us with migrating our data and the training programmes were great. We’re really happy with the system and absolutely delighted to have become the first educational institution to adopt FirstClass.” 


Katharine Palmer, Legacy Officer at Imperial College London

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The FirstClass Approach - Essential for Any Caseload

By Fiona Paton • June 18, 2026
Why smaller charities, arts and heritage bodies, and universities can't afford to manage legacies on a spreadsheet. Every charity that receives a legacy gift - whatever its size - carries the same responsibility: to honour that gift with precision, care and respect. The supporter who included your organisation in their will made a considered, generous decision. The way you administer that gift reflects directly on how seriously you take it. That's a truth that applies equally to a national charity managing thousands of cases a year and to a small arts organisation, university, or heritage body receiving a handful. The scale differs. The weight of responsibility does not. Yet many organisations in that second category are still managing legacy administration on spreadsheets. It's understandable - the volume feels manageable, the setup cost of dedicated software seems hard to justify, and there's a natural tendency to use familiar tools. But spreadsheets carry risks that are easy to overlook until something goes wrong. The Hidden Cost of 'Good Enough' Legacy administration is more complex than it looks from the outside. It involves tracking multiple cases simultaneously - each at a different stage, each with its own timeline, solicitors, correspondence and financial reporting. It requires a clear view of what income to expect, when, and how that maps against your organisation's plans. And it demands a clear, auditable record of every decision and communication. Spreadsheets can hold data. What they can't do is give you a real-time picture of your pipeline, generate reliable financial forecasts, or produce the audit trail that funders, trustees and regulators increasingly expect. When something is queried - by a solicitor, an executor, an auditor, or your own board - the answer needs to be immediate, accurate and documented. A spreadsheet rarely delivers that with confidence. There is also the question of what happens when the person who built the spreadsheet moves on. Legacy administration knowledge concentrated in a single file, maintained by a single person, is a fragile foundation for income that may represent a significant proportion of your organisation's voluntary revenue. "A lot of the organisations we speak to are managing perfectly well - they just don't realise how much peace of mind comes from knowing everything is audit compliant and in one place. FirstClass 5 Essentials gives smaller organisations the same professional foundation as the largest charities, without the complexity they don't need." - Bobby Parmar, Account Manager, FirstClass Built for the Scale You're Actually Working At FirstClass 5 Essentials is designed precisely for organisations in this position. It brings the same core capabilities that legacy professionals rely on - case management, financial forecasting, communications - in a version built for teams managing a smaller caseload. That means no unnecessary complexity. No features that exist to serve operations ten times your size. Just a clean, purpose-built system that gives you the visibility, compliance and confidence that spreadsheets simply can't provide. The practical benefits are immediate. A clear view of your pipeline and expected income. Case notes and communications in one place. And a record that holds up to scrutiny - because increasingly, it needs to. The Licence That Fits Unlike other software, FirstClass 5 Essentials doesn't require organisations to commit to bands of licences. If one person manages your legacy administration, one licence is all you need - with the flexibility to add more as your team grows. The investment required is smaller than many organisations assume. And when measured against the value of the gifts being administered - and the reputational and compliance risk of getting it wrong - it's rarely a difficult decision once the numbers are on the table. The Upgrade Path Is Always There Organisations change. Caseloads grow. Legacy programmes that start small can become central to a charity's income strategy over time. FirstClass 5 Essentials is not a ceiling - it's a starting point. As your organisation grows, so can your system. Upgrading when the time is right is straightforward, and everything you've built moves with you. You don't have to predict where you'll be in five years to make the right decision today. You just have to start with the right foundation. The Right Tool for the Work Legacy giving is growing. The Great Wealth Transfer is already underway, and more supporters - across a wider range of organisations - are including gifts in their wills. That trend makes the question of how those gifts are administered more important, not less.

Twenty Years, Zero Doubt

By Fiona Paton • June 9, 2026
The background How Daniel Pepper and FirstClass have grown together - and why he wouldn’t have it any other way. Some working relationships just work. They grow, they evolve, they quietly become indispensable - and before you know it, two decades have gone by. That’s exactly the story of Daniel Pepper and FirstClass. Daniel, who heads up legacy administration at the Royal National Institute of Blind People , has been working with FirstClass for around twenty years - a journey that began at the MS Society before he brought his expertise with FirstClass's latest version to RNIB. Not as a passive user, but as a genuine partner - contributing to the development of successive versions of the software, and now looking ahead to what FirstClass 5 will bring. It’s the kind of relationship that’s hard to manufacture and impossible to fake. A Team That Stays - and a System That Keeps Up Walk into Daniel’s world - figuratively speaking - and the first thing that strikes you is the warmth. He has never had to recruit in his eleven years at RNIB. Some of his team have been there eighteen to twenty years. It speaks to a culture where people feel genuinely valued, and where the work, however complex, feels meaningful. And complex it certainly is. Legacy administration isn’t just about processing paperwork. It demands a working knowledge of wills, tax, finance, surveyors, and everything in between. With over 1,200 cases to handle each year and legacy income of circa £37 million - a significant proportion of RNIB’s total income - the stakes are as high as they come. Getting it right, consistently, is non-negotiable. Which is exactly why having the right system matters so much. Daniel has a training approach that’s as simple as it is effective. When they moved to FirstClass 4 each morning, he’d place a fictitious letter or a will on his team’s desk and ask them to work through what needed to happen in FirstClass. No lectures. No manuals. Just real-world practice with the type of documents they would encounter. It kept everyone sharp, processes consistent, and meant the team could handle whatever came their way with confidence. When the move to FirstClass 5 comes, he plans to do the same - so the team hits the ground running from day one. And the team behind the software? Daniel is just as effusive. Knowledgeable, responsive, and refreshingly honest about what they can  and can’t do. In a world where over-promising is almost the norm, there’s something genuinely reassuring about a team that gives you a straight answer. It’s the kind of trust that takes time to build - and twenty years in, it’s clearly very much intact.

The Future of Legacy Fundraising Is...

By Fiona Paton • May 25, 2026
Beyond AI - two priorities the legacy sector can't afford to ignore. Read any thought leadership article right now - across any sector, not just legacy fundraising - and somewhere between a quarter and half of it will be about AI. We know, because we used AI to check. In the context of legacy fundraising, AI is consistently touted as the tool that will unlock the sector's next chapter: better engagement, wider outreach, sharper strategy, stronger revenue. And to be clear, we think there's real substance to that. AI has a meaningful role to play. But we also think two other areas are being quietly overlooked among the noise. Areas that deserve equal attention right now - and that legacy teams would do well to get ahead of. Those two areas are Rich Communication Services (RCS) and clean data. AI is important. But it isn't the whole story RCS and Legacy Fundraising RCS - the more advanced successor to SMS - is already making its presence felt in the charity sector, and its potential for legacy fundraising teams is considerable. Where SMS is limited to text, RCS enables charities to send messages that incorporate video, imagery, and interactive buttons - all within the native messaging experience on a supporter's phone. The result is communication that's richer, more personal, and demonstrably more engaging. Combine that multimedia capability with RCS's ability to tailor content for individual supporters, and you have a channel that is meaningful, personal, and scalable all at once. For legacy teams working to build long-term relationships with potential legators, that combination matters. Perhaps its most significant asset, though, is trust. RCS messages carry a Verified Sender badge, giving recipients clear reassurance that what they're reading is genuine. In a sector where legacy giving is built on trust above almost everything else, that matters enormously. It's a low-cost, high-impact way for charities to demonstrate credibility at the point of contact. This focus on trust is one that the wider sector is increasingly vocal about. A recent article from Smee & Ford - specialists in legacy data and intelligence - noted that while AI holds real promise for the sector, legacy fundraising remains deeply human in nature, and that AI-generated messaging risks feeling inauthentic if the human touch is lost. It's a perspective that reinforces why channels like RCS, which carry built-in credibility signals, matter as much as they do. You can read the full article at smeeandford.com . Through our sister brand Cymba , which specialises in developing and delivering RCS campaigns, we are already helping legacy fundraising teams harness this technology and build mobile messaging campaigns that make an impact. Its agility, tailorability, and scalability make it an opportunity the sector shouldn't wait for. Clean Data and Legacy Fundraising Data rarely gets the attention it deserves. When there is new technology to explore and AI-driven approaches promising transformative outcomes, the discipline of maintaining clean, accurate data can feel like an unglamorous afterthought. It shouldn't. Good data is the bedrock of good communication - and poor data is a reliable route to missed opportunities, wasted resources, and, at worst, damaged relationships with supporters. In legacy fundraising specifically, the stakes are high. Duplicate mailings, deceased supporters still being contacted, incorrect names, missing preferences - each of these is more than an administrative error. They erode the trust that legacy relationships depend on. And they signal to supporters, however unintentionally, that they are not truly known or valued. There is also a practical argument that goes beyond relationships. AI's effectiveness is entirely dependent on the quality of the data it works with. A model built on inaccurate or incomplete source material will produce inaccurate and incomplete outputs. Investing in AI while neglecting data hygiene is, in effect, building on sand. Maintaining clean data isn't always straightforward, but the rewards are consistent and compounding. Better-timed communications. More relevant personalisation. Greater confidence in what is being sent and to whom. Drawing on the expertise of our data cleansing team, FirstClass is already helping charities get more from their data - and from the systems and strategies built on top of it. In 2026, attaining and maintaining clean data should be on every legacy team's radar. Good data is the bedrock of good communication. Poor data is a route to missed opportunities - and lost supporters. A More Complete Picture AI is undoubtedly part of the future of legacy fundraising. Any attempt to argue otherwise would miss the point. But RCS and clean data deserve to sit alongside it as strategic priorities - not as supporting acts, but as foundations without which the promise of AI cannot be fully realised. Underpinning all three is the same thing: trust. Trust that communications are genuine. Trust that supporters are known and respected. Trust that the technology serving a legacy team is making relationships stronger, not weaker. The charities that hold that at the centre of their strategy - whatever tools they use - will be the ones best placed for what comes next. The legacy sector is evolving quickly. Charities that invest in all three - the innovation of AI, the reach of RCS, and the discipline of clean data - will be better placed than those treating them as an either/or. If you would like to explore how we can support your legacy team with data cleansing or RCS messaging , we would be glad to talk. Get in touch with our team on 01257 272730.