Legacy givers' shared identity with the Royal Opera House

Marina Jones

How does a shared identity contribute to the Royal Opera House’s legacy gifts? When do people start to think about giving a legacy gift? How does early adult personality formation influence legacy decisions? How should you talk to supporters about legacy giving?

In this episode, you’ll hear from Marina Jones, the Deputy Development Director of English National Opera.

This conversation was based on a research paper published by Marina and Claire Routley called “When I go my family will see my life in programmes”: Legacy giving and identity at the Royal Opera House.

You can find out more about Marina on the links below.

Reflection activity

Have a conversation about your closest supporters. Why do they support you? What sort of language do they use when talking about you? If you’re unsure, discuss how you could find out.

Resources and links

Transcript

Zac Parsons
Hello and welcome to this opportunity for you to learn, develop, and contribute more to your cause.

Today you’ll hear from Marina Jones, the Deputy Development Director of English National Opera.

You’ll learn: How the decision to give a legacy fits into a donor’s lifetime relationship with a charity. How early adult personality formation shapes how we make legacy decisions. Stories of why people made legacy gifts to the Royal Opera House. How to talk about legacy giving with your supporters. How to create a deeper connection with your supporters. And much more.

Just quickly, this episode was filmed in the Ellis Room in the London Coliseum during a matinee. So there is a little bit of background noise, which I think actually adds character to this episode.

Enjoy.

Marina, it’s lovely to have you. We’re going to be talking about a specific charity today, the Royal Opera House, and I thought it might be worth you giving us an insight into who they are, if anybody doesn’t know.

Marina Jones
Yeah, so the Royal Opera House is a performing arts venue in the centre of London that is home to the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet. There’s been a theatre on the site there since 1732. And it’s been in its current incarnation as a mainstream Opera House since the middle of the 19th century.

Each year, it produces hundreds of operas and ballets in a beautiful auditorium that fits 2,238 people and it’s a beautiful venue to go to. They’re actually three theatres in the theatre space itself. There’s the main auditorium, which is very red and gold and ornate. There is the Linbury Theatre, which is a 400-seater, more intimate space, again, following the horseshoe shape of the main auditorium. And there’s a close studio space as well.

And as well as the work of the opera and the ballet, you can watch Royal Opera performances and ballet performances in cinemas and online. And they also have a fantastic learning participation programme, which goes into schools and community groups and finds ways to introduce and allow people to explore opera and ballet.

Zac Parsons
And we are going to be talking about legacy giving today, which is I imagine just one part of the fundraising efforts of the Royal Opera House. For those who are unfamiliar with legacy giving or when a bit of a reminder, could you give us an insight into what that is? And perhaps maybe an insight into the Royal Opera House’s approach to legacy giving?

Marina Jones
Yeah, sure. So legacy giving is when people decide when they’re writing their will at the end of their life – or preparing their will – that they want to leave a gift of some kind to a charity that has meant something to them. So obviously, when people are thinking about what they want to do with their assets at the end of their life they’ll go through, and particularly in a Western cultural tradition, we tend to give things to our family, our nearest and dearest, and think about both the monetary assets we have, but also the physical assets and where they go and who we want to have them.

Legacy giving in a charitable and philanthropic way is a way that we encourage supporters that are close to us to give money or items or shares or percentages of their estate to the organisations and charities that have meant a lot to them in their lives.

And in terms of the Royal Opera House, the way in which that is realised is by inviting people to make that commitment when they’re updating their wills or when they’re writing their wills for the first time and inviting them if they’ve chosen to make that commitment to let the charity know so that we can continue that relationship with them.

At the Royal Opera House, there is a legacy giving pledge circle which is called the Baton Associates. Quite a lot of charities have some sort of named giving circle, which is a really lovely way to thank supporters during their lifetime for making that commitment and being able to thank them with events and with newsletters.

The Royal Opera House is perhaps slightly different to some charities and how it looks after legacies as well. Some charities, when you get the legacy gift – so you get 1,000 pounds as a legacy gift – it goes into your in-year budget and it’s budget relieving in that instant of, “here is £1,000 for you to continue doing your work with the Royal Opera House”.

The vast majority of legacies go into a separate but linked charity, which is an endowment fund and then each year the endowment fund gives us gifts to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Limited charity. So, they’re invested for the long-term future of the organisation. And that’s something that’s particularly appealing for legacy pledges because they want to know that their gift will have an impact, but they want to have the security of knowing your organisation’s going to be around for years and years to come and what their gift will do … will have long term impact for the work of the charity that they care about.

Zac Parsons
That’s a really interesting approach. And I haven’t heard of that before. I’m very new to legacy fundraising. So you have to excuse my ignorance but… hopefully, that means I’ll be asking questions that other people will also want to know about. Okay, so it goes into an endowment fund.

Marina Jones
I think the vast majority go into the endowment fund.

I think always with legacy giving, sometimes people have a very specific thing that they want to support within an organisation or a charity. And they then put that into the specifics of their will. So for example, sometimes people will say for the V&A – Victoria & Albert Museum – they’ll say, “I’ve got this antique teapot, and I want you to have this antique teapot and put it on display”.

For the Royal Opera House, sometimes it’s a specific item, “I have some of Margot Fontaine” – who was a very famous prima ballerina – “I have some of her shoes, I’d love you to have them and look after them”. “What we or I only care about Mozart production. So I only want my gift to go towards Mozart”.

What we always try and encourage and the established practice with legacy giving, is to say, if you’ve got something that you really, really care about, then let us know. And obviously, we will try and honour that commitment. But you never know where the organisation will be at that point. So it can be as broad as possible to say, or whatever you absolutely need this money to do at that time, because it might be that there isn’t – it’d be very unlikely – but there isn’t a Mozart opera this season, we need to do something else. Or it might be – with any charity – you know, the roof might have fallen in and actually it’s more important that we mend the roof so that we can continue to do the work that you care about.

Zac Parsons
I think it’s good for people to note what you touched on there around legacy giving, that it doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary. I think it’s very easy for us to… when we talk about giving to charity… for us to only think about money. But the idea of giving, as you say a teapot which, for some charities maybe isn’t… wouldn’t be useful. But for a charity like the V&A, if it’s an antique teapot, would be something.

I think something to take away is to think about giving outside of just the financial. But one of the things that we were going to talk about today is memories and developing shared identities with charities. And I think with an organisation like the Royal Opera House, naturally, performances and events are something which do establish memories. And you have in a paper something… Well, you mentioned autobiographical memory. So I thought it’d be useful to talk about what that is and how that differs from how we would think about memory generally.

Marina Jones
Yeah, it’d probably be helpful if I put it in context of the whole research paper that I did.

Zac Parsons
Yeah, please.

Marina Jones
I was really keen to know more about the people who decided to give legacy gifts to the Royal Opera House. And I wanted to put that decision, which is a really personal and special kind of gift that people do. Legacy giving is a really personal choice about the things that really matter to you in your life. So I wanted to put the context of why they’ve made that legacy gift into their whole relationship with the Royal Opera House.

We did that using oral history techniques. We had some training from the Oral History Society about how to get people to tell their stories. We then created a semi-structured questionnaire that we were talking through with people, most of it was individuals – but some of them were done as couples, because it was a joint couple of decision – and asking them about their history with the Royal Opera House.

Some were the first time that they had ever been to the opera house. Subsequent favourite memories are really strong memories, and then looking at why they then had become involved, why they decided to make a legacy gift.

And I think one of the things that was really, really strong and came out of a lot of interviews was the age at which people had first had an encounter with the charity. So a lot of people have had their first meaningful memory of coming to see an opera or play between the ages of about 18 and 25.

There’s a whole academic theory around life narratives. And that’s the bit in your life where you’re starting to develop who you are as a person, as distinct from who you were as a family child member. And you’re then creating your own first experiences of things. And if you think about your own life, there was a real clarity between that sort of 18 and 25. You know, the first time I did this… I went on holiday with my friends, or the first time I went to university… I did this thing. And those are the things that become part of our autobiography and the narratives that we tell ourselves about the kind of grown-up we became. Because I had this experience when I was 18 and, therefore, I became a person who liked this.

So it might be, you know, someone took me to the football for the first time, or I went to the opera for the first time, or I went snorkelling for the first time. It’s a point at which those memories become things we hold on to as the shaping of who we became as a person later on. And that we can look back in our autobiography of ourselves. If we’re telling a narrative of someone of, I’m here and I’m doing this because, perhaps my parents did this with me, or I was a student, and I did that. So it’s about that moment in life.

And we found that through the oral histories, nearly everyone had come during that 18 to 25 period. Some had come a bit earlier, some a little bit later. But there was a real clarity, a real detail in everything that they could remember about that first time.

There was one gentleman who’d been and he’d been fitted for his first black tie tuxedo as part of his first visit. And he remembers that but he also, “we got a taxi from Victoria to the theatre, and then all the way back”. So it’s all of the little details that made it and some of that is the building and the auditorium and the performance, but some of it is also the wraparound experience of going for the first time.

Another person said, they were in the bar, and someone had opened a bottle of champagne, and the cork popped out of the bottle and hit someone else in the bar. So it’s all of these really detailed memories about what happened when they were there that really cemented… And, I think, as you say, because each time you go, you’re reinforcing that memory and that individual story of, ‘the first time I went’.

And then, with many of these people, they were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, then they could say, “oh, well, I remember my favourite performance was this one”, or “I saw this very famous world-class singer do this”. And so you’re building your memories and building that story and that connection with the charity as you return. And some of these people are coming, every fortnight, every week; some of them are coming, two or three times a year.

Zac Parsons
It’s really interesting. I didn’t expect to hear that it would start in the 18 to 25 era but, reflecting on it, that does seem to make sense. I think research shows that our likeliness to be open to experiences decreases as we get older and I think there’s not so serious study that if you haven’t eaten sushi by the time you’re 35 you’re probably never going to eat sushi.

Marina Jones
Yeah, there’s another study that says that your musical set your music taste is fixed by the time you’re 23 and a half. So almost if you haven’t listened to a certain genre of music or had some sort of exposure, then you’ll never be you know, a drill fan, or a folk music fan, or something because there isn’t that kind of exposure moment when you can take those things in.

And probably, I’m sure all of our heads are too full of pop songs from the ages when we were teenagers through. And that things don’t stick as well from that really formative period in your life.

Zac Parsons
Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately for me, what was popular when I was young was emo songs like My Chemical Romance and Enter Shikari and things like that, which, unfortunately, I still will – for the nostalgia – enjoy when I probably shouldn’t. But there we go.

Marina Jones
I think is a really interesting thing because I think music is such an evocative thing, particularly in nostalgia. And particularly with opera and ballet because they are filmed and recorded and photographed, you’ve got added ways to appreciate and enjoy that nostalgia. Whereas with a music album, you might have the CD, you might have it on Apple Music, you can listen to it again. And again, you can watch a YouTube video of the thing. So it just reinforces again those memories and makes them stronger and stronger.

Because with opera, you’ve got the same pieces of music, but performed by different singers in different designs and different productions. But you can go back and go, “but I saw Maria Callas in 1964 do Tosca. And I can listen to that recording, and I can listen to you know, Angela Gheorghiu do it now”. And then I can… you can have your favourites, and you can enjoy different interpretations of it. But you’ve both got the visual and you’ve got the oral to keep that nostalgia really alive.

Zac Parsons
That’s really interesting. And that builds into that longitudinal building of a ‘shared identity’ with the building with the charity. Do you have a sense of how that shared identity contributed to the decision to give a legacy? And what age bracket did… or do you know what age bracket people start to think about giving legacies?

Marina Jones
So first, in terms of age brackets for making legacy gifts, it tends to be when you’re writing your will. And 99% of your life, you are not writing your will, you’re not thinking about writing your will. You might have a few years where you keep thinking, “Oh, I better write a will”. Or you buy a house or you have children. It tends to be big life moments that trigger those sorts of decisions.

I think, generally, you do three or four wills in your lifetime, you tend to do one mid-30s, bought a house had a child kind of thing; you tend to do one around retirement, because you’ve got to sort it out; then you have to do another one when you’ve got some grandchildren; then you do the ‘I’m not dead yet will’, that you’re finally sorting it out and some of the people you’re going to give things to have died, so you’ve got to reallocate where that is.

Within all of those moments, there are opportunities for charities to be promoting their messaging. And that’s why it’s really important to talk about legacy giving really positively all the time, because 99% of the time, you’re not going to think about it, but when you are, you want to have your charity in people’s minds and know that that’s a normal thing to do when people do it. And they get to go and have extra events. Or “I know actually someone gave a legacy. And that made a real difference to this charity, and they were able to refurbish this room or do this project with young people”.

I think that’s a really important part of it, is having it always present. Because you don’t know what other life things are going to be triggered that make people want to redo their will. And it was really interesting with the research looking at when we asked the question about, ‘and why did you decide to make a gift to the Royal Opera House?’. And there were lots of very emotional and personal reasons, but one was really practical; it was, ‘we were updating our will’. So it was actually that opportunity that they were redoing their will, or ‘we’ve got grandchildren’ or ‘we’ve moved house and we need to redo it’ that prompted them. So there is that really practical life moment.

And then it comes into the emotion of, ‘then we were thinking about what should we do?’, or ‘what should I do in terms of what do I want to do to look at my life and what I’m saying about my life?’. And for a lot of people it’s a really interesting identity thing because they they love the Royal Opera House or they love the charity that they do.

There’s a really interesting shift and a sort of identity fusion. I think when you’re working with donors and supporters who really love you, you can hear it in their voice. They stop saying, ‘you (the charity) are doing X’, they start saying, ‘we’re really good at this’, ‘we did some stuff’. They move into that ‘we’ and it becomes… it’s their space, their charity.

I think one of the interviewees said, “you feel when you come in, you feel like you’re coming home”, so it’s a really it’s a place of comfort. It’s a place where they’re very much themselves. They’re very connected to it. The ushers in the front of house staff recognise them when they come in and say good evening; they know them by name. People have their favourite seats. It’s like, you come home and you sit on the sofa, you always sit there on the sofa, and your partner always sits somewhere else on the sofa; it’s your space and you know where you go, you know what to do. So there’s a real ownership.

And one of them were saying, talking about the Nutcracker – which is a really iconic Christmas ballet, which is always on a Christmas – “oh, Christmas doesn’t start until we’ve been to see the Nutcracker”. But then they also said, “you know, we have the best rats”. (There’s a scene in The Nutcracker, where this battle between some rats and some soldiers because the Evil King of the rats has stolen Hans Peter and…), but it’s, WE have the best rats. We. They’ve taken on the identity of the charity as part of their own identity and start saying ‘we’, instead of ‘the Royal Opera House’ has the best rats. It’s that real connection to the organisation, to the work of the charity, and it becomes part of their identity.

I think there is part in terms of that legacy giving thing when you’re thinking about what you want to do when you’re saying, ‘I better… my niece, my Godchild, my sister… I’ve got to do that’. It’s like another family member. For some charities, they feel really close to the charity.

And then I think there are other things around saying thank you because it’s a place that people have had a lifetime of wonderful experiences. In far too many of the interviews, people were talking about how emotional opera or ballet makes them feel, and how much they were crying. There’s a certain piece of music or there’s a certain scene, or that certain moment, and they will say, “I was sobbing for Britain”. And, “when this happened…”. It is very cathartic. It’s very emotional. So part of that legacy giving decision for some people is really about saying ‘thank you’ for all of these amazing opportunities.

And then part of it, as well is saying,

“I want it to be there for other people, this place has been so special, so much part of my life, I’ve had these wonderful world-class emotional experiences, I want other people to have that for the future because it’s just life-enhancing and joyful. So I want it to be there for someone else. So if I can give a gift that makes that possible for someone else to be part of that, then that’s part of it”.

And then I think the other part that comes into it is about again – we talked about – autobiographical. It’s about a sort of symbol of immortality, which is a way of saying, “if I’m thinking about how I want to be remembered, as a person… you know, Marina was this kind of person”. And you might want to be remembered for being kind, or for being thoughtful, or for being funny. But actually, part of it is: and a person who loved art and loved culture. And it’s part of building that, ‘how I want to be remembered’, ‘how I want my personal legacy to be seen’, is part of that.

It’s a very special way of recognising the different bits of your life, and people were talking about the different charities that they’d given gifts to. So, some of them, ‘I’ve done my international-development-helping-people one, I’ve done the cancer one because of personal circumstances, and’ – for a lot of people – ‘and the one I’m doing for me, because it’s the one I love, and has brought me joy, is the opera house or, or another charity’.

So I think it’s thinking about the narrative you want of your life at the end, and how you want to be remembered, and how those gifts and choices about how you allocate the money and the resources that you’ve got are telling your story and continuing to tell your story and who you are.

Zac Parsons
It must be so touching to speak to people and have people feel that they are part of your charity, even though they’re quote-unquote… they’re not members of staff, but to use that ‘we’ language must be really quite powerful.

Marina Jones
Yeah, and I think a lot of the people we spoke to had really powerful personal experiences.

We did 20 oral histories, and two of them had met their husband/wife at the Opera House, which was lovely. One of which was where one lady was just bought a drink at the bar and was struggling between handbag, programme, tickets. And her now-husband of 27 years said, “come and sit down here and sort out all your bits”. And then they got chatting and then met again in the interval, then went to another theatre the next day to go and see some classical music, and then been married for years.

I think one of my favourite stories was two donors – the husband had died but – they had chosen to move from Hampstead because it was too far away from Covent Garden. So this is about, we’re talking three miles. They wanted to be somewhere where they could see the opera house from their flat. So they spent a couple of years trying to find the right place. But when they found somewhere and out of the window, they could see a tiny, tiny corner of the theatre in Covent Garden, so they were like, “This must be the right place for us”. And even though it’s a tiny flat compared to their bigger house, but because they wanted to be there, and it was so much part of their life. So yes, I think moving house to be near the charity you love speaks incredibly about the love and the connection that people have.

You don’t get that with every charity and different charities have really different connection points and emotional connections. I think that the reasons all fall within a broad similarity, but I think that particular emotional connection.

One of them also said, “I’d like to die in the auditorium”. You have to get very used to being able to talk about death. And be aware that we are talking about a gift that will only be realised when you are no longer here. But that real… it is so much home, it is so much part of me that it’s in my bones, it’s in my blood, sort of feeling.

Zac Parsons
Those stories are really quite lovely.

I am thinking about how people listening to this might be thinking about legacy giving. And I think there is going to be a question, I imagine from people coming into this, who’ve seen the title that we’re talking about legacy giving of, “well, how do we encourage legacy giving?”.

And if I may, in our conversation, I’m starting to feel like legacy giving is kind of like happiness in that the more you think about it, the less likely you are to achieve that.

And I’m stealing that from someone who I can’t remember the reference. I’ve read it in a book recently. And I’m annoyed that I can’t remember who I’m stealing that from.

And to me it sounds like it would be it’s difficult to ‘increase legacy fundraising’ without it becoming odd.

So what I’m trying to get towards is that actually, people’s connections seem to have been built by the Royal Opera House’s work and concentration on putting on good performances, as opposed to anything else.

So I’m trying to think about it is that when you’re doing legacy fundraising, is it more that information share with people who are already fund supporters as opposed to an active role? Do you want to talk maybe a little bit about that?

Marina Jones
Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I think one of the really key things for everyone is the quality of the work of your charity is your defining feature. And I think particularly the Opera House, the excellence of the work on stage is a real testament to why people have that connection, and want to be connected.

I think it can often be about length of time that you’ve been connected with a charity. One of my favourite questions to ask supporters is, “what was the first thing you came to see?” Or in a broader…, “what was the first interaction you had with this charity?”, “why is it special to you?”. Because I think people being able to tell their own personal story of what connects them to the charity reinforces that identity for them and makes… I think, almost, if you don’t ask them, they haven’t then articulated what it does actually mean or, ‘why do I support this charity?’.

And I think with every charity you support, generally, you’ve got some sort of reason and connection and story about why you first did it, or what was the first thing you came to support?

I think the other thing is, it’s celebrating what legacy gifts do. It’s showing the impact of the gifts. It’s not being afraid to talk about it and have the opportunity for people to be aware that it’s quite a normal thing within your charities. So many charities… I think it’s about 20% of charity or voluntary income for charities in the UK comes through legacy gifts. That’s an amazing amount of money.

And quite often, in British culture, we don’t really talk about dying in a positive way and being able to talk about it. And I think quite often with fundraisers, they can be of a different age or generation to the people that they are talking to about legacy gifts. And there is a certain nervousness around talking about death.

There’s a terror management theory, which is a big academic theory that says, as soon as you talk about this, basically, your brain is going, “I’m not going to die”, and “lalalalalala, I’m not listening”. There is a real avoidance in terms of, culturally, emotionally, evolutionary, in our own brains about being able to talk about death.

I think one of the things that fundraisers who work in that space needs to be really comfortable to be able to talk about it with people who are statistically nearer death than perhaps the fundraisers themselves. And being able to talk about it and find opportunities, in terms of direct mailing campaigns, bringing it up very lightly in lots of ways, celebrating it in newsletters, in magazines, having people connected with your organisation who people know and value, saying, “I’ve done it, I would like you to do it”.

And testing what works with your supporters, because different people or different messages are really going to resonate with people and being able… if people can see people like them doing it, it makes them feel this is a comfortable norm, ‘that person looks like me’, ‘they don’t look like they’ve got so much money, they look my level of wealth’ so it feels like it’s an appropriate thing. Because I think as well, sometimes people think, ‘oh, I can’t give a legacy because I can’t give a million pounds to that organisation’. Whereas actually being able to normalise that it’s gifts of all amounts, and it’s about the relationship, and it’s about a way of celebrating that relationship, rather than it being, ‘well, you can’t get this £5,000, so don’t worry, we don’t want you’. It’s about that celebration and that connection.

But it’s also I think, understanding what the real themes and stories are of the people that you know. Because the excellence of performance, or being made to cry by beautiful ballet or exquisite singers, is not going to be true for every charity, but every charity will have different, really strong themes, that means something to their supporters. So it is about getting to know the people who have made that commitment and asking and understanding why they’ve done that, and looking at the language they use and reflecting that back.

But finding people amongst that, who might be able to say,

‘yeah, I will write a letter and say, I decided to make this gift because of these reasons. You’re a person like me who does the same… cares about these things in the same way, would you consider it?’.

But also, I think it’s one of those things… it’s not something we do every day. So even if we have an ambition to include a charity in our wills, it might be 15 years or 10 years before we’re updating our wills. It is about being able to continue that messaging and continue that awareness so at that point when you are going, ‘alright, yes, there are now grandchildren we better put them in the will otherwise everyone’s gonna get cross when we die and we haven’t given something to the grandchildren’. That when they’re thinking about the things that mean something to them, they can say, ‘oh yeah, this charity’.

I think it’s… the other thing, is the interesting language around charity, I don’t think necessarily all of our supporters put our charities in a charity bucket in their mental accounts. They’re not saying always, ‘I’ve got to do something for charity in my will’. It’s about talking about the things that have meant something to you in your life, rather than what charities and what are you going to do good with in terms of when you die.

It is about that frame of reference for the supporters. And that will be different with different charities because different charities are very much more in a mainstream charity bucket in terms of mental accounts and I think particularly arts, culture, and other charities that… perhaps the more experiential and emotional, in different bits of the emotional spectrum, have that opportunity to really connect on that level. Whereas perhaps with a cancer or health/medical charity, it might be much more in your mind as medical and health charity and charity might be a quite strong driver within that or international development.

Zac Parsons
That’s an interesting point on framing and mental accounting buckets.

I wonder, just as a last point, do you think – setting aside legacies specifically for a moment – is there anything from your research or just generally working in the space that you think could be universally applied by charities to develop a more emotional and connected relationship with supporters? Or do you think that it’s more… I mean, it’s going to be, I think, easier, as you mentioned, in the more experiential type charities, but is this something that other charities could take away?

Marina Jones
I think there’s something really important about talking to supporters and listening to them.

And I think looking at the language they use around why they support and some of the adjectives or the feelings that they use to describe the connection, or the reasons around their charitable connection, and using those in your communications back to them. Because each charity will resonate with different bits of people’s identity, will have different experiences around why people support it, why they love it. And I think if charities can try and unpick and learn some of that language, and use it in their communications. I think that is a really strong way to build that connection, and to build that tribal loyalty that people have to certain charities and certain brands.

And, within certain things, perhaps within an opera context, you have people who support English National Opera (where I am now), the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, Wigmore Hall… they support all of them, but they might have a favourite. And each brand in that has a different emotional resonance, different adjectives, and different words connected with it. And I think it’s learning those within your space so that your communications are really authentic to your supporters about how they are connecting with you and what you stand for in their lives.

Zac Parsons
Perfect. I think that listening to your supporters is an amazing place to end this conversation and an excellent takeaway.

Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about your experience with your research on legacy giving with the Royal Opera House.

Is there anywhere that people can find out more about you and the work that you do?

Marina Jones
Yes, I’m on Twitter, @meenamtj, on my website, www.marinajones.uk, on LinkedIn. So, follow me and have a chat.

Zac Parsons
Perfect, and we’ll put all those links in the description. Thank you again for coming on. And I hope to see everyone next time.

Hello, me again.

Your homework for this episode is to have a conversation about your closest supporters. Why do they support you? What sort of language do they use when talking about you? If you’re unsure, discuss how you could find out.

You can find a link to a transcript and resources in the description. If you liked this episode, then don’t forget to subscribe for more. And the best thing you can do to support this show is to tell other people.

I look forward to seeing you next time.