A legacy today, for our wildlife tomorrow

 

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Where there’s a will there’s a way ...to leave a legacy that will have a lasting effect

If you value the natural world, and love the wildlife it supports, then you will want to safeguard its future. Leaving a legacy to the Avon Wildlife Trust really will make a difference.

Your gift means that the Trust can continue to:

  • acquire new nature reserves

  • manage and improve our current nature reserves, so that they remain havens for wildlife

  • protect threatened species, like the otter, marsh fritillary butterfly and dormouse

  • campaign to save sites where wildlife is threatened

  • continue to work with children, ensuring that they grow up to enjoy, appreciate and protect their natural environment

How you can help:
As a charity, Avon Wildlife Trust relies on membership subscriptions, grants, sponsorship and donations to fund most of its work — in other words, we rely on people like you. Please remember us in your Will. You do not have to be wealthy to leave a legacy — every little gift really does help.

How to word a bequest:
The most effective way to help is to leave a legacy for the general purposes of the Trust. Your gift can then be used for the most urgent work to save threatened wildlife, when the time comes. If you would prefer to make a legacy in favour of a particular project, please contact the Trust office to discuss which projects need support. Your solicitor will advise you on the correct wording in your case, but these examples may be helpful:

For a residuary bequest:
If you wish to leave the residue of your estate or a fraction of it to the Trust, that is, after other bequests and expenses have been met, the recommended wording is:

"Subject to the payment of any legacies and expenses, I bequeath the residue (or whatever fraction of it is applicable) of my real and personal estate to the Avon Wildlife Trust Limited, Registered Charity no 280422, Registered Office: 32 Jacobs Wells Road, Bristol BS8 1DR, for the general purposes of the Trust, and I declare that the receipt of the Treasurer or other proper Officer of the Trust shall be good and sufficient discharge to my personal representatives."

For leaving the Trust a property:

"I give to the Avon Wildlife Trust Limited, Registered Charity no 280422, Registered Office: 32 Jacobs Wells Road, Bristol BS8 1DR, my freehold/property, known as (property name/no and address) … and I direct my trustees to vest the same in or cause the same to be vested in the Avon Wildlife Trust Limited to be held for the general purposes of the Trust."

If you have already made a Will, it is possible to add a codicil which can name the Trust as a beneficiary. Just ask your solicitor, or contact the Trust for the name of a local solicitor who can help you.

 
Roz in her garden © Western Daily Press

Where there’s a will there’s a way

...to leave a legacy that will have a lasting effect


says Roz Kidman Cox


Quite simply, leaving a legacy to your local Trust is one of the best things you can do for nature. And what better way to both leave something lasting locally and give back something for all the simple pleasure and, yes, spiritual wealth that you have gained from being lucky enough to have everyday contact with nature.

Yet somehow making a will is one of those things that never seems to be a priority. Maybe there’s a little element of phobia. Perhaps it’s something to do with going to a solicitor. Or maybe it’s just not feasible thinking about the inevitable. I was forced to make a will ages ago, when I got my first mortgage, but somehow I never got round to updating it. But then I witnessed first-hand the huge financial and emotional liabilities caused by not doing so. OK, it took a year to make updating mine a priority and a near miss on my bicycle, but now I have done the deed, and it was relatively painless.

I took the decision to leave legacies to the Avon Wildlife Trust and to the Trust of my childhood home county Devon in the knowledge of the real value of such gifts. As a Trustee of the Avon Wildlife Trust, I know first-hand how legacies makes all the difference. At the best of times, even with the input of a huge number of dedicated volunteers, the Trust struggles to balance the books. To do the things it desperately wants to, whether purchase new reserves, manage existing ones or develop the many projects it is working on, legacies make all the difference, and being honest, a legacy can often be the miracle at the end of a difficult financial year.

Obviously, you want to leave most of what you have to your loved ones, but if they are to inherit property, a legacy won’t be resented or missed. And as your solicitor will tell you when you do the deed, there is the ‘what if’ factor that you must include in the will: what if your chosen ones should die before you, who would you leave your assets to? And should you, like me, have few living relatives, then leaving a your assets to the Trust in the ‘what if’ secondary intent, if not the first one, is one of the most pleasurable, precious and painless gifts you can give.

Now, the practicalities. Write down your wishes and leave the summary for a day or so before revisiting it. Make it simple (a codicil can take care of the little personal gifts). And don’t forget to list the ‘what if’ secondary wishes before you visit the solicitor. If your will is fairly simple, the appointment is unlikely to take more than half an hour and is likely to cost less than £100. Legacies to charities are tax free. That means your money or property will be given at its true value.

I’m now off to hassle my best friends with the same words, especially one (she knows who she is) who hasn’t even got round to making a will.


Roz is on our Board of Trustees and is a well known journalist and editor who edited BBC Wildlife Magazine for over 20 years.


Best bequests
Avon Wildlife Trust is deeply grateful to those members who have left lasting gifts. Without their generosity we would have been denied many opportunities to purchase land where matched funding was needed, to develop education programmes that have inspired a generation of local children, to manage our nature reserves for the benefit of wildlife - and all the other activities that it is impossible to fund from statutory bodies and grants.

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