Wills Month: local people building NZ communities

Eleanor Cater
CEO (Acting)
29 September 2025

Here at Community Foundations of Aotearoa NZ we are really proud of our Wills Month campaign that now ripples across the charity sector and has made its way into the language of legal and wealth management. What we started in 2018 in our network as a simple month-long campaign to promote gifts in wills to communities, has steadily grown into a national campaign that has been picked up across New Zealand. We see ‘Wills Month’ quoted across the board and will-related activity increasing across legal practice, wealth management firms and the wider charity sector. And it certainly created its own buzz of local media activity, as well. Wills Month, every year in September, has steadily grown as a key time where conversations around wills are becoming a norm in New Zealand communities.

Will making is also an extraordinary opportunity for us all to consider identity and legacy, which are some of the key things that make us human. When we talk with people who have shaped their giving plan through their local community foundation, we often hear them use heartfelt words, such as ‘joy’ and ‘fulfillment’. Mutual solidarity and care for fellow humans is the way that we are all wired, and the discovery of how to shape something extraordinarily changemaking for your local community can be deeply fulfilling.

The UK leads the world

The UK leads the world in legacy giving, where 17% of wills at probate include a charitable gift (compared to just 6% in New Zealand). A recent UK study involving 500 individuals with assets exceeding £1 million found that 50% of respondents have included charitable gift in their estate planning, with this figure increasing to 75% among those possessing assets worth £5 million or more. Through active campaigns, professional advisor advocacy, and supportive tax policies the UK is normalising gifts in wills to charity, and it is showing as the percentages of those who have done so continue to rise over the years.

Advocacy work at CFANZ

Our work here at CFANZ is similar in its focus to the UK’s, with Wills Month now firmly embedded as a national campaign and our advocacy growing through financial, legal and wealth management networks. Government policy promoting gifts in wills to communities is next – what say you Nicola Willis and Barbara Edmonds? Imagine the possibilities if we can, together, double or triple these most powerful of gifts to New Zealand communities.

As Wills Month comes to a close this week we, along with our 18 member foundations, want to say thank you to sector partners who have supported and worked with us this campaign month: Craigs Investment Partners, The Law Association of NZ, Chartered Accountants Australia-NZ, TVNZ, IHeartRadio, The Post, Grey Power Magazine, Aro Digital, and countless local law firms - thank you all. And special thanks to master storyteller Hadyn Jones who has helped us capture the heart and soul of Wills Month through the aroha that connects human intention to community impact through video stories of heartfelt Kiwi generosity and care.

Check out some of our video stories below and imagine the possibilities Aotearoa New Zealand!

Eleanor Cater has a Masters in Philanthropic Studies and is fascinated by the changemaking potential of gifts in wills, for both communities and for the givers themselves.