Your Will can support your community forever

Originally published in the Waikato Times, Tuesday 22 April 2025.

A bequest from Bunny Mortimer helped support the Taitua Arboretum she’d developed with husband John, leaving a long legacy behind them in environmental philanthropy. PHOTO: Mark Taylor / WAIKATO TIMES.

David Christiansen, Executive Officer, Momentum Waikato.

Writing your Will is one of the few moments in life when you can choose to commit to giving significant financial support to the things you really care about in your community and across the world. Your decisions about what will happen to your money and assets after you are gone are an opportunity to make a real difference.

That’s the central proposition of The Bequest Report, newly published by financial advisors JBWere New Zealand.

Their research points to a curious anomaly of Kiwis’ generosity – our giving to charities over our lifetimes is relatively high by international standards, and yet the number of charitable ‘gifts in Wills’ is quite low here, when compared to bequest rates in equivalent countries.

This matters, because with the Baby Boomers beginning to pass away, the Western world is at the start of the largest-ever inter-generational transfer of wealth.

The Bequest Report is therefore intended to be a ‘call to action’, for all New Zealanders to leave a portion of their estates to charitable organisations, so that our society as a whole benefits from this moment in history.

What are the key researched facts in the Report that confirm this development?

David Christiansen is executive officer of Momentum Waikato.

$1.6 Trillion is the estimated total value of personal wealth that will be posthumously transferred in New Zealand over the next 25 years.

Currently only 55 per cent of New Zealanders have a Will, and only six per cent of those Wills include any charitable giving, compared to 10 per cent of Wills in the United States, and 13.7 per cent in the UK.

Clearly, any increase in the number of New Zealanders including even modest charitable bequests in their Wills would be positive for the country’s not-for-profit sector and the people they support, and a lift to 10 per cent or more of us doing so would be transformational.

The positive impact would be even greater if the average proportion of estates given to charity was also to increase. The Bequests Report says that currently about $320 million is bequeathed to charities in New Zealand each year, which is an average of just 1.3 per cent of the value of the Wills involved. That amount could grow to $1 billion if the average proportion of Wills of charitable bequests rose just a few percentage points.

Currently New Zealand charities receive around $4 billion a year from all types of donations, so even relatively small growth in the average amount being charitably gifted in Wills would significantly increase the income for the ‘for purpose’ organisations.

Even if the average amount of charitable bequests was to double from that current 1.3 per cent to around three per cent, some 97 per cent of the value of estates would still be going to the Will-writers’ families.

Only 55% of New Zealanders have a will, according to the Bequest Report. PHOTO: WAIKATO TIMES / 123RF.

Simply being charitable in your Will demonstrates your values and community connections to your family, by telling them what groups or causes you want them to continue to support after you’re gone, without significantly reducing how much they are to receive then.

JBWere are not the only ones who are well aware that the movement of generational wealth is underway. Advertising by the larger national charities asking for bequests is becoming increasingly common.

However, bequests going directly to organisations are ‘one and done’ donations, in that the money is usually spent on their immediate operating costs or a capital spend.

This is where local community foundations such as Momentum Waikato come in, as independent for-purpose place-based trusts that enable generous people, from all walks of life and of any income, to pool their charitable donations, prioritise their support to their local area, and make their giving last forever.

Community foundations exist all over the world, a real case of ‘think globally, act locally’. There are now 18 of us located around New Zealand, all started by local people wanting to build a robust, effective and locally controlled funding capacity.

Purpose-led funds are set up to support a particular charity or charitable activity, which range from conservation to health to education to the arts. PHOTO: Mark Taylor / WAIKATO TIMES.

Community foundations’ ‘smart giving’ model turns bequests into a long-term investment that over time grants out far more money to charities and causes than the initial sum you leave behind.

Endowment funds are being set up at Momentum Waikato by local people with bequests, donations or trust transfers, and then bound together into our investment portfolio which, by virtue of its scale and prudent management by our investment partners, then provides good and consistent earnings over time. The resulting investment income is then proportionally divvied up each year to our constituent funds, to be granted out and or re-invested as directed by their respective founding Deeds.

So, when considering the call made in JBWere’s Bequest Report, if you are to include a charitable bequest in your Will, the most effective strategy for ensuring it will have a sustained positive impact, in your town, society and world, is to give it to your local community foundation!

When doing so, you have some options. Your bequest can establish your own ‘named fund’, which will simply pay out its income to the charities of your choice, with or without a public-facing appeal for further donations.

And/or you can bequest to an existing endowment fund, which fall into two broad categories.

‘Purpose-led’ Funds are set up to support a particular charity or charitable activity, which range from conservation to health to education to the arts. A remarkable bequest example at Momentum Waikato is the Mortimer Taitua Fund, created by the Will of the late Bunny Mortimer to support the Taitua Arboretum that she set built up with her late husband John and then gifted to Hamilton city.

The Cambridge Community Fund is a local example of a place-based fund. PHOTO: Mark Jephson / WAIKATO TIMES.

By comparison, ‘Place-based’ funds are set up and run by people from a particular town or district, to appeal to and support their local community across a range of needs and aspirations. The Cambridge Community Fund launched last year was the first of these set up with Momentum, with Coromandel-based funds also currently on the launch pad.

As The Bequest Report points out, New Zealanders are generous people, so the challenge it lays out is not about a lack of generosity. It is about us, Kiwis as a people, needing to culturally normalise charitable giving in Wills.

So, whether you are writing your Will for the first time, or are planning to update yours, it is time we all had a chat with our partners and families, and our lawyer or accountant, and ideally with Momentum Waikato, about how we want to invest some of what we leave behind in building a better world.

Even a small proportion of your Will going into a charitable bequest will still leave most of your estate to your family, while creating your enduring legacy to the world.