The things a will never mentions

A solicitor will take a name and a registered charity number. They will not take the haircut.

Remember A Charity Week runs from 7 to 13 September. The consortium behind it has about 200 UK charities in it, and has been making the same request since 2000: after you have looked after family and friends, would you leave a gift to a cause you care about. The films that travel with the week ask something else first. How would you like to be remembered.

The Be Remembered idea has been running on comedy for a while. In 2024, Atomic London made spots about Jackie, whose family still talk about her wonky haircuts, and Owen, who kept dancing after a double hip replacement. The Drum ran them as a way of talking about gifts in wills without a lecture. This year's new films are due during the week, and Third Force News says they will stay on digital channels until December. Lucinda Frostick, who directs Remember A Charity, talks about keeping the conversation in front of people. An awareness week is a reminder. It is not a deadline, and nobody is late if they do not rewrite a will between Monday and Sunday.

Remember A Charity says about six per cent of people leave a charity a gift in their will. Among charity supporters aged 40 and over, the share who say they have already included one has risen from 14 per cent in 2010 to 22 per cent, in a study the research agency OKO ran for the consortium last November. Another 35 per cent of those who have not done it yet say they are open to it. Smee & Ford and Legacy Futures put last year's gifts in wills to UK charities at about £4.4 billion. Health charities take the largest slice of that money.

Macmillan, one of the members, says gifts in wills were 43 per cent of its income in 2024: more than £106 million. That is the sort of figure that keeps a support line staffed. Hospices live closer to this money than most of the rest of the sector. When Channel 4 put a number on the gap between what the state pays and what care costs, the remainder had to come from somewhere. A shop till. A sponsored walk. Later, sometimes, a line in a will.

A will is a legal instrument. It can name the people you love, and a sum or a share, and a charity if you want one there. It will not hold the haircut. It will not tell a grandchild how the tea was made. The campaign knows this, which is why the films lead with the quirk. The quirk is the remembering. The gift pays for work that outlasts you, done for people you will not meet.

A private memorial can keep the joke and the photograph in a place that stays in the family. Families already do that work, often in a kitchen, without any campaign at all.