We were recently contacted by Jenny Anne Dexter, Individual Giving and Legacy Manager at Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity. She asked if there was any way we could help her to expand her knowledge and legacy experience by putting her in touch with a larger charity who would let her visit them to find out more about the work they do. Here, Jenny tells us about her experience and what she learnt from work shadowing at Cats Protection…
In my current role there was a lack of significant caseload, particularly difficult cases. To supplement the theory taught on the CiCLA course, I was looking for examples of all types of contentious case that I hadn’t seen first-hand, including testamentary capacity, Inheritance Act claims and undue influence.
Step forward ILM, who put me in touch with Marie Baines, a legacy professional with many years of legacy experience in charities of all sizes. She currently works for Cats Protection – a much larger charity than Rainbow Trust, where there is a whole library of historic cases filled with fantastic insight. She and her team invited me to spend time with them, not only reading through their wealth of case files but also to answer any questions I had. I spent three afternoons at their offices and am planning to visit again before Christmas to talk through my Unit 1 CiCLA results.
In addition to developing a greater understanding of how to handle contentious estates, this experience also introduced me to some valuable new connections. I’ve now installed several measures at Rainbow Trust to ensure any claim arising can be dealt with much more efficiently and fed back to my leadership team how important it is to budget for legacy administration expenses!
It’s fantastic to have such a great network of colleagues in the field who support and encourage each other. I am able to pick up the phone and call a number of other ILM members who I’ve met at events or through existing connections., which is a valuable resource at this early stage in my legacy journey.
Marie also enjoyed Jenny’s visits. She told us…
Jenny`s role in a smaller charity is very different from the pure legacy administration work that the team carry out here at Cats Protection, so it was very much a two-way experience. I feel we all learnt from Jenny`s own experiences as well as being able to offer her the chance to observe the workings of a four-strong full time legacy management team.
Jenny`s visits enhanced our working day and did not interrupt it at all. We hope that by looking at a wider range of legacy cases we helped Jenny with her studies and options in furthering a career in Legacy Management. I would recommend larger legacy teams to invite CICLA students in for a shadowing experience, especially if they are studying from smaller charities. I really enjoyed having Jenny coming in and so did the rest of the team – and it wasn`t just because she brought us lovely home made cakes and biscuits!
If you think you could support an ILM member by offering the chance to visit your charity, or if you feel that you would benefit from such a visit, then please email Nichola (training@legacymanagement.org.uk) and we can help!