Silence Is Not Neutral
This lesson explains why respectful asking matters: many Australians are open to charitable gifts in wills, but most will never act unless the option is made visible at the right time and in the right way.
Listen to the lesson
Not asking is still a choice
Many small charities treat bequest fundraising as something they are avoiding politely.
They do not want to pressure supporters. They do not want to sound opportunistic. They do not want to talk about death. They do not want to raise a subject that belongs inside a family and a solicitor’s office.
Those instincts protect something important. But they can also hide a professional failure.
If a charity never mentions gifts in wills except in a website footer, many supporters will never know it is a normal option. They may care deeply about the work. They may have supported it for years. They may be reviewing their will. But if no one ever makes the option visible, the decision may never enter the room.
The Australian evidence makes that uncomfortable. Include a Charity / Fundraising Institute Australia consumer research indicates roughly a third of Australians say they would consider leaving a gift to charity in their will. Yet only around 6.5–8% of wills actually contain a charitable gift, and that range has been broadly flat for a decade. The Facts Pack frames this as an intention–action gap, not simply a generosity gap.
The gap is partly structural. Include a Charity attributes it substantially to the fact that Australian solicitors and will-writers rarely raise the charitable option when drafting wills. That does not mean fundraisers should behave like solicitors. It means silence across the system has a cost.
A charity cannot control every will-writing conversation. It can control whether its own supporters ever hear, in a calm and respectful way, that leaving a gift in a will is possible.
Silence protects no one if it keeps a willing supporter uninformed.
Respectful bequest fundraising is not pressure. It is making a legitimate option visible, then leaving the donor free. The professional failure is not only asking badly; it is never asking at all.
The evidence for asking is stronger than the discomfort
The strongest causal evidence in the Facts Pack comes from the United Kingdom, not Australia, and it must be named that way.
The UK Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team, with Remember A Charity and Co-operative Legal Services, ran a controlled trial across about 1,000 new wills. When solicitors said nothing, about 5% of clients left a charitable gift. When solicitors were required to ask every client whether they would like to consider a gift to charity, the rate roughly doubled to about 10–11%, reported as approximately 10.8%. When solicitors used a social-norm framing, the rate rose further again.
That is not an Australian fundraiser trial. It is not permission to push donors. It is evidence that a low-pressure, normalising question can change whether people act on values they may already hold.
The follow-up UK research found that solicitors and clients were broadly comfortable with the charitable option being raised as a normal part of will-writing, and that how the question was raised mattered. Include a Charity applies this evidence in Australia and estimates that if Australian solicitors routinely asked, charities would receive at least a billion dollars more each year. That figure is a sector extrapolation from UK evidence, not an Australian experimental result.
For this course, the lesson is not “ask everyone.”
The lesson is: a respectful question is not the same as pressure. A normalising mention is not the same as manipulation. Silence is not automatically ethical.
The pressure test
The difference between respectful asking and pressure is not whether the word “will” appears. It is whether the donor remains free.
Use this test before raising the option:
Five checks before raising the option
- 1 Is the context relevant? A future-facing donor comment, a long-loyal relationship, a will-making resource, a supporter survey, a stewardship call or a planned communication can make the topic relevant. A complaint, acute grief, confusion, vulnerability or a donor trying to end a call does not.
- 2 Is the wording optional? Respectful language invites consideration. Pressuring language implies duty, urgency, disappointment or moral failure.
- 3 Is the next step small? The next step is usually information, a conversation, or a note for later. It is not a commitment, a percentage, a pledge form, or a discussion of who is in the will.
- 4 Is the boundary clear? The charity can explain its work and provide its correct details. It must not advise on estate structure, tax outcomes, family provision, how much to leave, or whether wording is legally valid. Australian family provision claims are a live risk under state and territory succession law, and fundraisers must not step into legal advice.
- 5 Can the donor easily decline? A good bequest opening leaves room for “no,” “not now,” “I’ve already sorted my will,” “I don’t want to discuss that,” or silence. If declining would feel awkward, the ask is too heavy.
This is the standard: make the option visible without making the donor manage your expectations.
The supporter who was never asked
The supporter who was never asked
Mara Singh has supported a regional animal welfare charity for 18 years.
She gives $80 most Christmases and sometimes sends towels after storms or local rescue events. She has attended two open days. Staff know her by name because she writes short notes on donation forms: “For the older dogs,” “Please keep the shelter going,” and once, “My late partner and I adopted Bella from you in 2009.”
The charity has a gifts-in-wills page on its website, but it is buried under “Other ways to help.” The annual newsletter mentions bequests in one sentence near the back. No one has ever called Mara except to fix a receipt error.
At age 74, Mara updates her will. Her solicitor does not mention charity. Mara leaves her estate to two nieces and a neighbour. She still loves the shelter. She simply does not think of a charitable gift while the will is being drafted.
No one behaved badly. No one pressured Mara. No one made a mistake that would appear in a complaint file.
But the charity’s silence had a cost.
A better earlier moment would have been a stewardship call after one of Mara’s future-facing notes:
“Mara, your note about keeping the shelter going stayed with us. I’m calling to thank you, and to ask what you most hope we protect for animals in this region over the next few years.”
If Mara answered with strong future concern, the fundraiser could then make the bequest option visible in a later, careful step. If Mara only wanted a brief thank-you call, the charity still would have deepened the relationship.
Gift size: modest current giving; estate gift unknown. Relationship: long-loyal existing supporter. Channel: phone following mailed appeal note. Conflict type: under-asking / missed legitimate opening.
Equating restraint with professionalism
Fundraisers who are new to bequests often see only two choices: stay silent or be pushy. Because they do not want to be pushy, they choose silence. It feels safer.
Equating restraint with professionalism
Professional restraint is not silence. It is controlled, permission-based visibility.
The trap
“We don’t bring up bequests unless the donor asks.”
Better
“We make gifts in wills visible in relevant, respectful moments. We do not press for a decision, advise on the will, assume the donor’s family circumstances, or treat interest as commitment.”
The better rule protects the donor and the charity. It also recognises the evidence: under-asking is a measurable failure in gifts-in-wills fundraising.
What this changes
Silence is not neutral.
A charity that never raises gifts in wills may think it is being respectful, but it may also be keeping willing supporters uninformed. The evidence shows a real gap between Australians who say they would consider a charitable gift in their will and the much smaller share of wills that actually include one. The UK ask trials show that a single low-pressure question, asked as a normal option, can materially change behaviour; Australian bodies use that evidence to argue for more routine asking.
The discipline is balance. Do not pressure. Do not advise. Do not assume. Do not turn every warm supporter into a bequest prospect.
But do not hide the option so completely that only the most self-directed supporters ever find it.
Coming up: Words for Real Conversations
Lesson 4 establishes that silence has a cost and gives you the pressure test for raising the option respectfully. Lesson 5 builds on this directly, giving staff the actual language to use in real supporter conversations.