A smaller but likely to be long-lived UK charity?

[former player]

I am making a will, and the final contingency to resolve is that if my intended heirs predecease me I need to leave the money to charity.  The question is: which one or ones?

My problem is that with luck this will is only going to be operative in a couple of decades, or perhaps even more, going by family history.  (It might also be next week, of course, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.)  So the charities I name should be ones that will still be around and doing good and necessary work in a couple of decades.  But the ones I can think of that are pretty definitely going to be around then tend to have plenty of money.  And the ones that need money now (I do donate and volunteer) might not be around in a couple of decades or might not be quite what they now are.  I really don't want to have to keep updating my will every few years.

So here I am, crowdsourcing the good people of the UK end of the forum for ideas.  I can't guarantee I'll use them, but all publicity is good publicity, right?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

[PhilB]

All I can suggest is that you either include something like 'if any of the above charitable bequests fails, the amounts concerned go to XXX' where XXX is a bigger, longer lasting charity,. Or you give your executors the power to chose such similar charities as may be in existence at the time of your decease, and keep your executors up to date by separate letter as to which ones you'd like them to pick.

[former player]

Those are good suggestions.  I was hoping to have things so buttoned down that I could avoid my executors having to make decisions for me - being an executor is a pain in the backside, as I know to my cost, so I think anything that avoids extra decision-making is going to be the better answer even if not the best possible substantive outcome.

[PhilB]

The other option is to pick say 10 smaller charities and instruct that the estate is to be divided equally between them.  The odds are that at least some of your chosen charities will still be going when the time comes, but you could also have something like the RNLI as a final backstop.

[MarcherLady]

Something that would help the executor narrow things down is to ask them to use the Charities commission search site to specifiy local charities that work in your areas of interest, and to select 10 for example "Charities in Northumberland that support animals":

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/results/page/1/delta/20

It's still maybe more work that you want to ask them to put in, though.

[sea_saw]

Wow this is even worse than my dilemma of who to donate to on a monthly basis!

I don't know that I have any solutions beyond the Oxfam / NSPCC / Macmillans / National Trusts of this world, and there's no charity of that size that I don't have ethical concerns about let alone the question of whether they need my money. I currently donate to various little groups which mostly aren't even Charity Commission registered, but there's no way I expect any of the to last a lifetime.

It's frustrating. There's a local charity I used to volunteer at which is decades old and about medium sized (total income in the hundreds of thousands, as opposed to hundreds of millions like the ones above) and I always thought was about the right size to still be around in a few decades and still make a difference with a single bequest. In fact I know a single bequest has been a godsend to keeping the doors open over the years. But then last year they closed their core service due to, rumour has it, financial mismanagement. They might still recover and reopen it but I was gutted.

If you want to give to somewhere small-to-medium sized I'm not sure I have a substitute for making a list yourself and reviewing annually-ish. I don't know how practical that is when you're trying to future proof for possible future situations where you may not have the energy and capacity to do so.

Or yeah, pick one of the larger orgs that you do feel good supporting, and accept that it will be less personal but the money will still ultimately be put to good use. Perhaps the tier just below the really big boys. E.g. Action Aid is a £60 million sized charity compared to Oxfam's £370m (and my inside info says it's a lot better). Or Medicins Sans Frontiers is £70m to I don't know Macmillan's £230m. (All numbers from UK Charity Commission so only a partial picture of more international charities).

[GilesMM]

How about a church? Those tend to last a long time, especially in the UK.

[ExitViaTheCashRamp]

Perhaps you could specify the area or criteria you prefer:

E.G. I wish to donate X% to Womens Aid or a similar charity that supports women seeking support from domestic abuse in all its forms.

 Whatever you pick will have times that they are "good" and times that they are "poor" at what they do - since they are made up of people. At the time of donation the great employee might just have FIREd and Steve Spendthrift has just taken over - so nothing can be guaranteed.

 Politics changes too, in two decades your beliefs and values today may well be considered prejudiced and out of touch - your favourite charities may turn to a moral path you strongly disagree with. Nothing you can do can predict that, if you want to donate in two decades you have to hand your money to people who are in school today and hope they feel the same about the world that you do.

[former player]

My main charitable activities and donations at the moment and for the past few years are the environment and refugees.  I do some minor volunteering/donations for the W.I and the local women's refuge.  Apart from the refugees it's all very local to my area, which is one of the poorest in the UK.

I offered a donation to my local church a couple of years ago for them to sort the guttering but they were too disorganised to take me up on it.  That was more of a preserve a listed building/community asset thing than a religious thing.

I have a rescue dog but he's a lot more of a boon in my life than a charitable donation.

[Borgo Panigale]

I contribute to a local charity, Winterhilfe, and a multinational one ironically Médecins Sans Frontières.  This allows both an impact in the community and some support for an organisation with the resources to tackle major crises.  Both have been around a while and I'm comfortable they will be there to receive- a legacy.
I have my doubts about the plethora of small charities which don't necessarily have the resources, expertise or reach to make a major impact, so I tend to support those with economies of scale.
BTW MSF has an operating budget of over EUR 2 Billion pa - the vast majority of which comes from private donations.

[sea_saw]

I really like MSF @Borgo Panigale and also donate. They seem to have a really helpful combination of practical help and political switched-on-ness. They don't seem to have the brand recognition here for some reason but it makes complete sense their budget would be that large globally.

https://msf.org.uk/issues/mediterranean-search-and-rescue they have a search and rescue ship running in the Mediterranean.

[Jade]

We volunteer fit an animal shelter but also had the thought about of that particular one would still be around when the day comes and went with Battersea Cats & Dogs home instead as they've been around a long time.

[Brit71]

If you have any real ties to a religious denomination (even if you're not often actually darkening their doors) then their charities tend to be better bang for the buck than big secular charities and the charities don't tend to wind up and tend to keep to their original purpose.  Also being within a denomination they tend to be smaller - and even the relative behemoths like CAFOD are still cheaper.   Of course they operate, or at least should operate, within the moral precepts of the denominations - and if that's a problem for you then keep away - but they do feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted and all the other things the secular charities do. But generally cheaper.

For long term stuff I would avoid charities that are tied to a specific church or congregation as although they can do some truly remarkable things on a shoestring they are somewhat less likely to be around or serving their original purpose over the course of a few decades than the denominationally based charities.