Building Referral Relationships with Solicitors, Financial Advisers and Will-Writers

Professional role

A solicitor, financial adviser or will-writer is not a distribution channel for your bequest brochure. They are sitting inside a client relationship that has its own duties, risks and boundaries. If the charity approaches them as a source of prospects, the relationship starts in the wrong place.

The strongest referral relationships are not built on the question, “Will you send us people who might leave a gift?” They are built on a better professional question: “Can we help you raise charitable giving safely and neutrally when it is relevant to your client?”

That distinction matters because the opportunity is real, but easy to mishandle. Research for the JBWere Bequest Report estimates that about $150 billion passes through inheritances in Australia each year, but only about $1.3 billion — roughly 1% — goes to charity. Australian sources cluster around 6.5–8% of wills containing a charitable gift, while roughly a third of Australians say they would consider one. Include a Charity attributes part of that gap to solicitors and will-writers rarely raising the charitable option when wills are drafted.

Those figures do not mean advisers owe charities more referrals. They mean many Australians may never be given a normal, well-timed chance to consider whether charitable giving belongs in their estate plans.

A charity’s professional-referral strategy should therefore begin with client choice, not charity income. The intermediary’s role is not to advocate for your organisation. Their role is to help the client consider relevant options. Your role is to make the charitable option easier to raise without creating pressure, confusion or legal risk.

A professional referral relationship earns its place when it helps an adviser serve the client well — not when it gives the charity access to the adviser’s clients.

Intermediary role

What a good intermediary relationship actually does

A useful professional relationship does three things.

First, it helps the intermediary recognise when charitable giving may be relevant. That may be a client who has supported a cause for years, a client with no close family, a client who speaks about values and continuity, or a client who asks what will happen to a cause after they are gone. These are not instructions to push a gift. They are signals that the charitable option may belong in the conversation.

Second, it gives the intermediary neutral language. The strongest evidence in this field supports normal, low-pressure asking. In the UK Behavioural Insights Team trial with Remember A Charity and Co-operative Legal Services, charitable gifts in wills rose from about 5% when solicitors said nothing to around 10–11% when solicitors routinely asked whether clients would like to consider a charitable gift. That is UK evidence, not an Australian trial, but Include a Charity applies it to the Australian context because it shows the cost of silence.

The point is not that every adviser should ask, “Would you like to leave money to this charity?” That would be the wrong question. The useful question is closer to: “Some clients like to include a gift to charity after looking after the people close to them. Are there any causes you would want considered in your planning?”

Third, the relationship gives the adviser accurate organisational information when the client needs it. The charity can provide its full legal name, ABN, DGR status where relevant, general information about its work and who to contact. The charity must not turn that support into client-specific advice about estate structure, tax outcome, wording validity or who should receive what. Those boundaries will be handled later in the course; for now, the strategic point is simple: the charity supports the professional conversation without taking over the professional role.

The best referral relationship is often invisible at the moment of decision. The client feels the adviser has raised an ordinary planning option. The adviser feels the charity has made that option safer to mention. The charity may never meet the client until much later, or not at all. That is not a failure. In bequest fundraising, trust often moves through other people before it moves toward the organisation.

Common mistake

Mistake: asking for referrals before earning a role

The mistake is to open the relationship as though the professional’s value is access to prospects.

It sounds like this:

“We’re trying to grow our gifts-in-wills pipeline. Do you have clients who might be interested in leaving something to our charity? We’d be happy to meet them or send material you can pass on.”

A fundraiser may say this because they are under pressure to produce pipeline, prove activity to the board, or turn a networking meeting into a measurable result. But the professional hears something different: privacy risk, conflict risk, pressure on clients, and a charity that may not understand the adviser’s duty.

Better practice starts by earning a legitimate professional role.

It sounds more like this:

“We are not asking you to promote us to clients. We are trying to make sure that, when a client already wants to consider charitable giving, you have accurate information and a safe route back to us. We can provide our legal identity, ABN, DGR status where relevant, plain-English information about our work, and a contact point for organisational questions. We would not expect you to recommend a gift to us or advise on the client’s estate structure.”

This works because it lowers the professional’s risk. It says the charity understands the boundary. It also gives the adviser a reason to keep the charity on file: not because the charity wants leads, but because the charity can help when the client raises a values-based planning question.

What this changes

You now have the strategic frame for the rest of the course. Solicitors, financial advisers and will-writers matter because they are present when charitable intent may become formal instruction. The charity’s task is not to make them advocates for one organisation. It is to make charitable giving normal, safe and easy to raise when the client’s values make it relevant.

The referral relationship is therefore a professional-service relationship. It is built on usefulness, neutrality and restraint. Later lessons will separate the needs of each intermediary, define the Australian boundary line when a professional is involved, and show how to approach and brief advisers without turning them into sales agents.