Major cancer charity puts efficiency first with FirstClass

The background

Since it was formed in 1911, Macmillan Cancer Support has grown into one of the largest British charities.

Raising money to provide vital cancer services, campaign for better cancer care and support the cancer workforce, Macmillan Cancer Support is now nationally recognised and hugely respected.

In fact, in YouGov’s UK Charity Rankings 2023, it claimed first place as the charity that most people would donate to tomorrow.

Legacy gifts account for 40 per cent of the organisation’s income, currently totalling over £90m each year, and the Legacy Income team handle over 3,000 legacy notifications annually.

Yet, despite its size and the volume of support it receives, Macmillan Cancer Support was running a dual system when it came to managing its legacy financial data and its legacy notifications – an approach that was creating inefficiencies and leaving its legacy management programme open to risk.

This all changed in 2023 when it chose FirstClass to handle both elements.

“We’ve been using FirstClass for legacy case management since 2016. However, we initially delayed migrating the financial data on legacies because we were expecting to move away from our income management system within a year or so, and it made sense to wait for that project before moving over our legacy data. However, the income management system project was significantly delayed, and it was not until 2023 that we were able to progress with moving our legacy income onto FirstClass.

“It is fantastic to have finally brought everything onto the same system having craved it for so many years. The legacy team are loving having everything in one place and have found the process of recording income and making estimates straightforward to learn and easy to use. Our finance team are equally delighted, as they can now run reports in minutes that previously took hours and were subject to error.

“We knew FirstClass would give us opportunities to improve our processes and reporting but the benefits are even greater than expected and it is hard to believe we waited so long!”

Lucy Pike, Legacy Income Development Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support

The project

In many ways, Macmillan Cancer Support was an outlier; it was one of the UK’s largest charities yet its dual system approach meant that it was not straightforward to access financial legacy data.

Not only was the dual system unnecessarily using resource, but the organisation also has plans to replace the in-house finance system, so this is a step forward towards being able to phase it out. Additionally, only a few remaining members of the Technology team knew how to support the in-house system, which increased the charity’s risk profile.

The decision to migrate legacy financial data was taken in 2023. This began with a significant data cleansing programme, which saw the FirstClass team assist with identifying discrepancies that had built across the two systems over several years. Once the current and historic data was consistent, it was migrated into FirstClass.

Following several months of testing, the project went live in June 2024 and Macmillan Cancer Support now intends to be an active member of the FirstClass steering group, which will see the charity help shape the next generation of the legacy management platform.

“We’ve always had a good relationship with the FirstClass team. This project has only strengthened it. The way they operate is always led by what their clients need. Now that we’re planning to be an active member of the steering group, we recognise that Macmillan Cancer Support has the opportunity to influence what comes next from a sector-wide perspective. After all, if the system can work for other charities as well as it works for us then everyone can realise the benefits. Our partnership has been hugely successful and we want to continue building it in any way we can.”

Lucy Pike, Legacy Income Development Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support

The result

Since migrating its financial legacy data into FirstClass, Macmillan Cancer Support has:

Incorporated the accrual function, which allows the charity to calculate outstanding income in seconds – a process that previously took over two hours to run
Delivered a training programme to all 18 of its legacy team members enabling a more strategic approach to legacy and finance management
Enabled more accurate integration with key industry bodies such as Legacy Foresight, the UK’s most prominent legacy market analyst. Not only is the data required by Legacy Foresight produced more quickly, but it’s also exported in a standardised format that Legacy Foresight can use
Phased out the manual spreadsheets that it was using to produce multiple sets of data. Now, everything can be contained and managed within the FirstClass platform
Significantly improved the efficiency and detail of case management, reporting and analysis, and more effectively prioritised workload and legacies. Prior to unifying its systems, the charity was unable to easily determine how much each legacy case was worth and prioritise workload based on value without cross referencing two systems
Built stronger relationships both internally and with FirstClass, which better enables it to shine a spotlight on the value of legacy giving.

Download the case study

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