Longstanding legacy collaboration gets results for animal welfare charity

The background

Founded in 1897, Blue Cross is a registered animal welfare charity that continues to transform the lives of pets and people by helping to provide life-saving operations, paying for food and finding new homes.

With legacy income currently totalling £25m each year, gifting has become a critical revenue stream for the charity – so much so that it now accounts for over 50 per cent of total income.

In order to ensure that its legacy management strategy is effectively delivered and the organisation futureproofed, Blue Cross uses FirstClass’s legacy management platform – and has done so since 2005. And, as the importance of legacy revenue has grown, so too has the capability of its FirstClass platform.

These days, Blue Cross uses the very latest in legacy management software. However, it wasn’t always like that.

“When I joined the organisation in the late 1990s, we were reliant on a spreadsheet to manage legacy income of around £7m. It was incredibly basic, there was too much manual accounting and there was a lot of duplication. In 2005, shortly after I began leading the legacy team, we installed FirstClass and never looked back. It has been developed by legacy professionals, it’s bespoke to the nature of our work and it does everything we need it to do.”

Emma Colborne, Head of Legacy Administration at Blue Cross

The project

On installation of an earlier version of FirstClass in 2005, as part of a support and maintenance contract that remains in place today, Blue Cross’s Legacy Administration team immediately began exploring the system’s capabilities and establishing what additional functionality it required.

Working collaboratively with Blue Cross, FirstClass began designing in tools and reporting features based on real-time feedback it was receiving from the team. For example, if Blue Cross required specific reporting abilities in response to requests from the board of trustees, FirstClass’s design team would quickly incorporate it within the platform.

This partnership, which has lasted almost two decades, has resulted in Blue Cross having access to a cutting-edge legacy management system that supports the team’s every requirement. Even today, as part of the longstanding support contract, FirstClass continues to refine and development Blue Cross’s platform in response to industry and organisational changes.

In 1998, the Legacy Administration department was a team of two people. Now, in 2023, there are 10 members, all of whom use FirstClass to manage, record and execute the wishes of the several hundred giftors who each year leave a gift in their will to support the organisation.

The result

Since incorporating FirstClass, Blue Cross has:

Used the platform to scan, log and archive all incoming post, and now import emails, which has become the preferred communication method by solicitors
Issued all official correspondence to key stakeholders via the platform
Been able to quickly access giftors’ property and asset valuation details including estate value, offers received, sale prices and Blue Cross’s entitlement figures
Had instant access to real-time pipeline income so that at any given moment, Blue Cross can establish how much legacy income is due – and when it’s due by, appreciating though the fluctuations with asset values with changes in the external market
Used FirstClass’s accurate legacy pipeline forecasting to make strategic decisions on future spending and investment based on live gifting figures and projections
The ability to easily map out all legal fees pertaining to each individual case in the event of contention, which allows the organisation to establish likely legal costs vs likely legacy income
Set automatic review dates so that no individual case amongst Blue Cross’s 750 live cases gets lost or overlooked
Utilised the FirstClass Life Interest module, which supports generational mapping and ensures that gifts that have been left but benefit delayed until the death of a life tenant do not get overlooked – regardless of when the entitlement becomes due
Been able to quickly and easily allocate security clearance levels for all members of the organisation, so that only those who need to access and update sensitive information can.

“The FirstClass team is always on hand to help us. We have to review our contract annually but there’s no desire whatsoever to go elsewhere; it does everything we need and if it doesn’t, the FirstClass team make it happen. The platform really is a fundamental part of our organisation. If we didn’t have it, I don’t know what we’d do. I just couldn’t imagine life without the system. These days, if you were to suggest to the team that we were going back to paperless they’d all break out in a cold sweat!”

Emma Colborne, Head of Legacy Administration at Blue Cross

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