By Steve Lloyd
Over the past year I’ve been reminded too often that a published obituary may be when deceased individuals ask for donations to be made in their name. Sometimes, it’s the family that decides to honour a charity or nonprofit by requesting donations in the name of the person who has passed on. Often, it’s mentioned as “in lieu of” or “please consider a donation to…”.
Obituary-based donation requests often specify charities or organizations that were important to loved ones, yet some simply request donations be made to “a charity of your choice” in the name of the deceased. Also, just as often, a family may want to “pay it forward” by asking for donations to an organization that raises awareness about a specific illness or medical facility. The family may wish to have people donate to memorial fund started to honour a loved one or to a foundation which supports causes that the deceased supported. For any donation request, often the name of the charity, nonprofit, or cause is noted but no other information is included.
Some obituaries don’t mention donations at all, of course.
Who benefits most from obituary donation requests?
What I started to wonder was whether there is any formalized research in Canada about patterns of donation requests from obituaries? Is there more to donor patterns than the assumed connection to a fatal condition and a donation request for the charity which is doing research and medical assistance for that condition? Do other types of philanthropic categories also benefit from obituary-based requests? Does it matter to understand those trends, and if so, what can be applied from knowing the data?
Clearly, people who have an opportunity to consider their mortality may decide to request donations in their name to organizations which they feel closest to their hearts, or the beliefs they hold and the lives they’ve lived.
But is that the whole story? Does it vary by age? Gender? Geographic location? What actual percentage of obituaries don’t mention any type of donation request? My search for answers didn’t provide much usable data and so we set about doing a round of research on the subject.
First Look Research
Foundation Magazine took up the initiative to provide insights on these trends by studying a month of obituaries as published in two newspapers, one large-city paper in The Toronto Star and one community daily newspaper in the Peterborough Examiner. We literally went through all the January 2024 editions of both those newspapers and recorded the data as much as possible for those unfortunate individuals who had left us and whose obituary was placed in the paper. In most cases, we went through the physical editions, but digital copies were also accessed through PressReader website.
What we discovered was a much more diverse and expansive donation recipient pattern than we expected. Still, clearly, two types of charities or nonprofits lead in the memories of the departed and their families. As expected, the most common were national organizations associated with healthcare and medical conditions; and the others are local organizations of all types to which people felt an attachment or had experiences. However, that was only part of the story, and even those patterns took on some twists that were unexpected, at least by us.
The Overall Numbers
So let’s start with the overall numbers in the obituaries found in those two papers (and we didn’t include duplicates which appeared in both papers or appeared in multiple editions of one paper). Each unique obituary was counted, evaluated, and tallied for a range of basic factors.
Here’s the overall counts, for January 2024.
| Type | Toronto Star | Peterborough Examiner | Total |
| Obits | 407 | 108 | 513 |
| Male | 195 | 50 | 245 |
| Female | 212 | 57 | 268 |
With more than 500 obituaries in a single month from two newspapers, we felt there was sufficient data to provide useful insights on the patterns and the nature of reflection and gratitude of those facing their final choices. One fact we noticed was that there wasn’t a single obituary which indicated a gender pronoun other than “he/him” or “she/her”. They were all clearly identified as male or female, which is how we tallied the counts.
We then examined the age patterns overall and separated by male and female. For some obituaries, it was impossible to determine the age of the deceased. In some cases, we found other sources to determine their age. If there was any doubt, we left it blank. There were 41 people whose age were undermined, 25 of them female and 16 of them male. The average age of the 472 people whose ages were known was 84.28 years upon their passing. For females, it was 85.2 years. For males, it was 83.3 years. The females ranged in age from 48 to 106 years. The males ranged in age from 16 to 101 years. There were 12 females over the age of 100, compared to 5 males. Those numbers are believed typical of the lifespans of females being slightly more than those of males. (Statista data for 2021 shows female life expectancy at 84.67 and male expectancy at 80.62).
One aspect of the age influence was that of the 17 individuals who passed who were 100 years or more, their donation requests became less related to health charities and or medical facilities than their younger counterparts. In fact, 9 of those individuals didn’t mention any donation request at all. The ones which did included a few hospitals and medical foundations, but others included retirement residences, churches, a homeless shelter, a women’s shelter, the Salvation Army, and Friends of Algonquin Park.
How Many Organizations Do People Designate?
For most obituaries, there was a single charity named as the preferred “in lieu of” choice. There were 153 obits which didn’t name an organization at all. There was a single organization named in 221 obituaries. There were 119 people who named 2 options. After those, there was considerable drop-off for people citing more than 2 options for donations. There were 15 people who named 3 options. Two individuals named 4 possible donation choices and two also named 5 possible choices. No one named more than 5 options for donation requests. Among those who named at least 3 possible donation organization choices, 8 were female and 11 were male. In a few cases, no charity was mentioned but there may have been requests for something else, such as “be kind to a stranger.”
| Number of Donation Options Mentioned Per Obituary | |
| None…………………………………………….. | 153 |
| One…………………………………………….… | 221 |
| Two……………………………………………… | 119 |
| Three…………………………………………… | 15 |
| Four…………………………………………….. | 2 |
| Five…………………………………………….. | 2 |
What Types of Organizations are Designated?
To determine the categories of the charities and nonprofits named in the obituaries, we used the categories which are designated on CanadaHelps.org website. One way they help all donors narrow a target is by a category choice. These are 10 specific groupings.
Animals; Arts & Culture; Education; Environment; Health; Indigenous Peoples; International; Public Benefit; Social Services; and Religion
However, we chose to adjust our categories to allow for a division of the health category between specific medical conditions or illnesses (diabetes, cancer, etc.) and specific medical facilities (hospitals, hospices, care homes, etc.). We did this because of the nature of the way people were asking for donations, and the connection between illness, treatment centre, and long term care centres. We also had to make decisions on a very few nonprofits mentioned in obituaries which didn’t seem to fit those (eleven) groupings. An example would be Canadian Junior Golf Association, the only sports-related request. The CJGA actually falls under CanadaHelp’s category of Education, which we kept.
A trend was the number of requests for a donation to a “charity of your choice”. Sometimes, it was very specific, such as the one which asked for a donation to a “veterans society” and another which mentioned a GoFundMe program for “a caregiver”. Sometimes the obituary asked for people to do specific things, such as “a random act of kindness” or “do something nice for a person in need”. We kept those as separate counts. In total there were 43 obituaries which mentioned “A Charity of Your Choice” as the “in lieu of” request.
Here are the category counts, based on those adjusted groupings and a couple of tweaks on vague charitable references. Keep in mind the number of charities is different than the number of obituaries because of the multiple-request instances.
| Category | Count |
| Animals………………………………………. | 27 |
| Arts & Culture……………………………. | 7 |
| Community Programs……………….. | 4 |
| Education…………………………………. | 12 |
| Environment…………………………..… | 4 |
| Health Facilities……………………….. | 108 |
| Indigenous Peoples………………….. | 1 |
| International……………………………. | 14 |
| Medical Conditions………………….. | 190 |
| Public Benefit……………………….…. | 32 |
| Social Services………………………… | 36 |
| Religion……………………………………. | 45 |
| Charity of Your Choice……..……… | 43 |
| Personal Requests…………………… | 5 |
Who Got the Mentions?
For named choices, there were clear favourites. Sometimes, the charity or nonprofit would be a national organization or a specific local office of the same national organization. For those, we grouped them together as a single organization. Here are the Top 10.
| Organization | Mentions |
| Heart & Stroke Foundation | 52 |
| Alzheimer Society | 34 |
| Canadian Cancer Society | 33 |
| Food Banks (Grouped) | 17 |
| Parkinson’s Foundation | 10 |
| Canadian Diabetes Association | 9 |
| Humane Society (Grouped) | 9 |
| The Salvation Army | 7 |
| Sunnybrook Foundation | 6 |
| Canadian Mental Health Association | 5 |
Those are the top 10 mentions. There were hundreds of organizations named a single time. The range of types of charities, nonprofits and community groups were as large as the individuals themselves requesting the donations.
Some of the named options were organizations which we had to do a bit of digging to find and categorize. These would include the Abraham Festival (a gathering of the spiritual descendants of Abraham…Jews, Christians and Muslims who meet in a spirit of celebration and awe so that ‘we may know one another’), Fairhaven Foundation (a long term care home), Ian Anderson House (quality end-of-life care in a home-like setting), Gorilla Doctors (dedicated to conserving wild mountain and eastern lowland or Grauer’s gorillas through life-saving veterinary medicine in Rwanda), and Galcom (provides durable technical equipment for communicating the Gospel worldwide).
Some of the biggest foundations and charities in the country weren’t mentioned or had one mention. Those included CAMH (once), War Amps (once), Kids Help Phone (once), and United Way (once).
People also leaned toward requesting donations to their local church or religious centre. Mentions included a wide range of churches in and around Toronto and Peterborough.
Conclusion
I’m not sure there is a fully realized conclusion. It was one month and two newspapers. But the patterns seemed detectable and the breadth of “in lieu of” requests was remarkable and heartwarming. The science of our study is debatable, since it is anecdotal and limited, but it gave me, at least, the impetus to pursue it further.
A few further thoughts, and a suggestion, an offer and a request.
Thoughts: I contemplated what I might ask in my own obituary, if I had the chance to contemplate this in advance. How personal would I want my donation suggestion options to be? What’s closest to my heart beyond family and friends? Well, animals and all living creatures top the list. How about “please tap your brakes a little and beep the horn when you see squirrels crossing roads”? It works. I have saved many from the crush of my wheels. And since there are no squirrel charities or rescue groups, it’s the least we can do.
For a suggestion: I’d love to hear from any of you about what you see as value in this research, if any. Does it matter? Should we be paying attention? And if we do, how can we ensure that more of those kinds of requests are actually acted upon by those who know the deceased? Would our philanthropic culture benefit, both spiritually and financially? It would be interesting to know how often donation requests are acted upon, and what value of dollars are sent.
For the request: How about this: if you feel so inclined, go through your local newspaper (if you still have one and if you remember what those are and where to get them) for a month and record the same data we did, and submit it to me by email at steve@foundationmag.ca as either a spreadsheet or a Word doc. We’ll compile all the data and publish the results, perhaps moving this idea forward. The more people who participate, the more valuable and usable the data might be. And if you want to write something about this current batch of data—offering your insights, comments, criticisms, views or more—please feel free to do so and sent to the same email and you may get published, but at a minimum, I’ll read it and take it into consideration.
Finally, the offer: If you want a spreadsheet of the full data set, drop me a note (as above) and I’ll send you the complete set of spreadsheets. You may do some analysis as well—feel free to point out any mistakes—and we’d love to share your data-driven insights with our audience.
Steve Lloyd is the founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Foundation Magazine and Lloydmedia Inc., which also publishes DM Magazine (for marketers) and Total Finance Magazine (for finance executives).
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