How to include Christian Aid in your Will

Specific gift – an item such as jewelry, property or shares

Pecuniary gift – a fixed sum of money

Residuary gift – all or part of what remains of your estate after other wishes are carried out (often the most impactful way to give)

Legacies fund over a third of our work, and we simply couldn’t do what we do without them. Every gift in a Will - however large or small - makes a lasting difference and helps us plan for the future with confidence. 

Most supporters choose to give to our work in general, allowing us to use their generosity where it’s needed most. If you’d prefer to support a specific area, we’d be very happy to discuss this with you.

Leaving 10% or more of your taxable estate can reduce your Inheritance Tax rate from 40% to 36%. If you leave your entire estate, the gift would be free of Inheritance tax. Speak to your solicitor for advice.

Faith Will came about because of research that showed that more than two thirds of people who leave a gift in their will to Christian Aid also leave a gift to their local church or Quaker meeting. This makes great sense, our supporters care about their neighbours in their local communities and their global neighbours. This helped us to see that it made sense for churches and Christian Aid to come together to talk about the importance of gifts in wills. To date we have seven ecumenical partners (the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Quakers, the United Reformed Church, the Church in Wales, the Presbyterian Church of Wales and the Union of Welsh Independents).

Yes, absolutely, Faith Will is a way to ask people to consider the possibility of leaving a gift in their will to Christian Aid and to their local church or Quaker meeting. That works for any kind of church or meeting.  

It started with the statement that headlines in this campaign – ‘Your faith is powerful, so is your Will’. ‘Faith Will’ is a distillation of that phrase, but also helps to identify the act of writing a gift into our Wills as an expression of our faith as Christians.     

We want to help churches to start to have conversations about gifts in Wills. 

We know it isn’t always easy to broach the subject but we have resources that can help churches to start the conversation in a variety of ways whether you can spare five minutes or an hour – it could be showing a video, including an article in a church newsletter, having a Christian Aid speaker include some information about Faith Will in a talk about any aspect of our work, or even having a service that is focused on thinking about the kind of legacy we want to leave through our lives, and through gifts in our wills.   

You can order resources for a Faith Will moment in your church, or book a speaker at any time of year. If you need additional information just drop us a line at legacyteam@christian-aid.org and we’ll be happy to help.  

It's easy to think this way. However, leaving a gift in our Will for a cause we love is actually a life-affirming and positive thing to do. It's an expression of our faith, and allows our values and passions to live on beyond our lifetimes and make a lasting difference to the future, both for our local neighbourhoods and further afield, for our global communities. It's a positive and transformational gift whatever stage of life we are at!  

It is indeed a private matter, but we are not asking people to disclose any personal information or tell us what they have decided to do.  We are simply asking for consideration of leaving a gift in their Will. However, we find that many people like to tell us about their pledge and share what inspired them to do so and we love to hear their stories!   

If we are concerned about how we would bring this up in church, church leaders sometimes address Christian giving and stewardship as part of  their teaching on discipleship matters  - this can be a good context in which to talk about it. There are other ways to address it, some of which you will find in our worship resources in the sermon notes section.   

Will writing is something a lot of us put off so it’s likely there will be some folk in your church who haven’t done it yet. But more importantly most people update their Wills as life circumstances change. For example, having a new grandchild or selling a house. When people make those changes, they also often update the causes that they would like to support. It’s much more common for people to add a church or charity to their Will than remove them.