Leaving a Legacy to Clare
Legacies at Clare
Remembering the College with a gift in your Will enables you to make a lasting impact at Clare alongside your everyday financial commitments. Every bequest of whatever size secures the success of the College for future generations. By leaving a legacy, you can help guarantee Clare’s long-term mission: to provide an outstanding education to the brightest students, irrespective of background.
As a charity, Clare has been maintained and strengthened by legacies large and small since its foundation. Bequests from alumni, Fellows and well-wishers support every aspect of College life, from student bursaries and hardship funds to postgraduate scholarships and research fellowships, from small-group teaching to the College buildings and gardens, sport and music. Unrestricted gifts in particular allow us to respond through time to changing needs across all areas of the College.
Please consider being part of this 700-year-old tradition of supporting Clare through a gift in your Will.
Making a gift in your Will
Making a Will does not need to be complicated or expensive, and your solicitor or legal advisor can help you include a charitable legacy for Clare. If you have already written your Will and would like to add a legacy to the College, you can do this easily by adding a codicil. Please ensure that your legacy is made to Clare College (Registered Charity No. 1137531) for general charitable purposes.
If you are comfortable doing so, please let us know the approximate value of your intended legacy to Clare and any particular preferences on how the legacy is used. This will help us
advise you of any changes that may affect your legacy, both in terms of wider tax implications and College-specific areas of need. With any legacy, you can specify if you would like to leave
your assets to a named beneficiary (for example your spouse) for their lifetime, with the whole or a proportion reverting to Clare on their death.
Please consider leaving a percentage of your estate, rather than a fixed sum, to protect your intention from inflation.
Sample Will text
‘I/We give free of tax to the Master and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge, CB2 1TL (Registered Charity No. 1137531) the residue/a proportion of the residue of my estate/the sum of [x] percent to be used as they think fit and declare that the receipt of the Bursar or other proper officer for the time being of the College shall be sufficient discharge to my/our Executors.’
If you have already remembered Clare with a gift in your Will, please inform us so we can thank you during your lifetime.
Supporting Clare’s areas of greatest need
Unrestricted legacies, which are used to support areas of greatest need, are crucial to the ongoing vitality of the College. By indicating that your legacy is unrestricted, you can ensure that your gift will have the greatest impact whenever it is received.
In recent years, unrestricted legacies have helped Clare by:
• Supporting our outreach and access programme
• Enhancing health and welfare provision for Clare students
• Sustaining the supervision system of small-group teaching
• Providing bursaries and hardship grants to students, and support for furloughed staff, during the COVID-19 pandemic
Benefits to you
Your legacy to Clare is free of Inheritance Tax (IHT), and if you leave at least 10% of your net estate to charities like Clare, the IHT rate on the remainder reduces from 40% to 36%.
If you are a beneficiary of someone else’s Will, you may be able to make your own inheritance more tax efficient by altering the amount left to charity in the Will. If 4% of the taxable estate
is already earmarked for charitable legacies, increasing that amount to 10% will not cost you or other beneficiaries a penny. The entire sum bequeathed to charity is compensated, in full, by the inheritance tax saving arising from increasing the charitable component of the Will.
Always seek independent legal advice when making financial decisions and drawing up a Will. The College is unable to advise on legal matters.
The Samuel Blythe Society
Those who inform the College of their intention to leave a legacy to Clare are invited to join the Samuel Blythe Society, named after the 17th century Master of the College whose legacy today forms a significant proportion of the endowment.
Members are invited to a special celebratory event each year. They are also listed in the annual donor list unless they prefer to remain anonymous.
Why we are supporting Clare
Professor Dafydd Thomas (1963)
The reason I’ve decided to remember Clare in my will is that it changed my whole life.
Between school and Clare I had come to realise that I no longer wanted to read Mathematics, but wished to change to medicine. Unlike most places, Clare was sympathetic and not only agreed to my changing, but also went out of its way to facilitate this, including arranging for me to spend most of my first year getting 1st MB(A-levels) in Biology and Chemistry. I’m so grateful that the College realised that my change was not just a whim, but a move resulting in a medical career that brought endless interest and satisfaction.
Mohammed Amin MBE (1969)
I went to Clare from the slums of Moss Side in Manchester.
It transformed my life.
The story of Lady Clare has stayed with me all my life. Clare would never have become what it was for me without her legacy, and the legacies of many others. That is why, both my lifetime and in my will, I am giving far more to Clare than to any other charity.
Jenifer Ball (1973)
I am one of several hundred alumni including a legacy to Clare in their will, acknowledged by membership of the Samuel Blythe Society.
It is not always possible to make donations during a working life, but this was one way in which I could try to repay my debt to the College for four such formative years as student and postgraduate.
I have bequeathed a percentage of my estate, which will make it easier for my executors, as well as being tax-efficient.
Nicholas Le-Faye (1982)
I have decided to leave a legacy to Clare in my will as recognition of the opportunities that my time here opened up to me and to help others who come after me to benefit from the continuation of the College, and its traditions of excellence. I do appreciate the fact that, through the Samuel Blythe Society, the College takes the time and effort to engage with and acknowledge legacy donors.
Jessica Spence (1994) & Nick Gardiner (1994)
We met at Clare, so the college is obviously very special to us, and the three years we had there gave us so much – intellectual foundations, challenge, fun and amazing lifelong friends.
Clare has a special character, community and perspective, that we felt was extremely valuable, and it mattered to us that this remained intact, and also accessible to everyone who would benefit from what the college has to offer. Putting Clare in our will is our small way of making a contribution to that and saying thank you for all it gave us and many others.
Elisabeth Marksteiner (1985)
There has not been a day when I have not been grateful to be part of the community of scholars which has given me the learning to look at the world critically.
I’ve spent my career teaching and advising others and by my gift hope that others may be equally as inspired by Clare as I have been.
I still dream of a lottery win to give a large gift to Clare now, but know that after my death others will benefit from the legacy gift I’m making.
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