Leaving a legacy

With Cancer Research UK’s Free Will Service, leaving a gift in your Will to aid vital research has never been easier

When in 2008, Alan Sugden began to experience some significant discomfort, his doctor soon raised the possibility of bowel cancer. “As soon as the doctor mentioned that it might be bowel cancer, I knew that it was,” says Alan. “My boss had died of bowel cancer and it was very much in the forefront of my mind. I just knew that I had it.”

After a colonoscopy confirmed his fears, Alan started treatment straight away, and was invited to join FoxTROT, a Cancer Research UK clinical trial testing a new treatment for people with bowel cancer. Patients would be given chemotherapy before surgery to remove their tumours, as well as further chemotherapy afterwards. This differed from the gold standard of care treatment at the time, which usually only included chemotherapy after surgery.

By August 2009, Alan had undergone all of the treatments and operations – as well as additional chemotherapy sessions to make sure the cancer had completely gone – and was well enough to return to work. His experience and the gratitude he feels to Cancer Research UK for enabling people to try pioneering new treatments through trials, has prompted Alan to leave a gift in his Will to Cancer Research UK. It is thanks to those supporters who, like Alan, make these gifts in Wills that Cancer Research UK can fund large-scale projects with huge potential. Gifts in Wills fund a third of Cancer Research UK’s research and are vital to accelerating progress to save more lives.

If like Alan you too choose to leave a gift in your Will to Cancer Research UK, you will be helping to fund life-saving research that could bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. Alan has chosen to leave a residuary gift in his Will. After taking care of your loved ones, you can leave a share, or the remainder, of your estate to Cancer Research UK. As it’s less likely to be affected by inflation, it’s the best way to ensure the value of gift you want to make is received.

Alternatively, you could leave a specific sum of money or gift, such as stocks and shares. To help you decide which is best for you, Cancer Research UK’s Free Will Service allows you to contact one of its trusted Will-writing partners, who will guide you through the process.

Sadly, cancer is not a rare disease, and there are many people like Alan across the UK. One in two people in the UK born after 1960 will get cancer in their lifetime.† But in the past 40 years, cancer survival has doubled in the UK. Two in four people now survive their cancer for at least ten years and the ambition of Cancer Research UK is that by 2034, three in four people will survive their cancer, but this will only be possible through the continued generosity of people like you, for which Cancer Research UK is beyond grateful.

“My cancer was treatable,” says

Alan. “That’s thanks to the work of organisations such as Cancer Research UK, who keep investing in these areas.”