The UK's only awards recognising professionals and teams across the whole legacy giving sector
 

The Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards 2025 will showcase the outstanding achievements, talent and dedication of UK legacy giving professionals, and highlight the vital and significant income that gifts in wills bring to charities.   

Now in its 3rd year, these unique awards have become established as a forum to celebrate the success, dedication, and excellence in the legacy giving community, raising the profile of the valuable work of professionals within their own charities, whilst also providing a platform to benchmark the progress made through collaboration and innovation across the sector.

Combining a morning Excellence Forum with an afternoon award ceremony, the day promotes talent, partnerships and creativity in legacy giving, provides insight and inspiration from the award-winning entries, encourages lively discussion on the direction of the sector, and brings together this brilliant community to share their pride in working in this incredible sector.​​

2024 Event Highlights

The inaugural event in 2024 inspired charities and their partners to think bigger and aim higher – and to celebrate the achievements, vital income, and opportunities enabled by gifts in Wills. Best of all, it created day where the entire legacy community could gather to share their pride in working in this incredible sector. Since then the event has grown into a must-attend event for all who are part of the unique legacy fundraising community  – where excellence is recognised, talent is rewarded, and dedication is acknowledged.

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Why Enter?

Winning a Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Award is a prestigious achievement for individuals, teams, projects and partnerships that recognises excellence, innovation and impact. It helps with:

  • ​​​​​Improving your profile: Position yourself and your organisation as leaders in legacy giving, help inform the sector by sharing your contributions and insights, enhance your organisations reputation and attract the best talent to your organisation.
  • Securing Senior buy-in by highlighting the excellence, agility and success of your legacy giving strategy with your senior leaders and peers. 
  • Boosting team morale: These awards bring together teams and individuals to celebrate exemplary skills and giving people a boost to help them go back to demanding workloads with a renewed sense of purpose and positivity.

Not only that but our amazing judges are picked according to their expertise meaning you’ll also benefit from useful feedback on your entries from a diverse panel of sector specialists.