FirstClass goes Global

The background


International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was founded in 1969, with the aim of stopping the commercial hunt for whitecoat seals on the east coast of Canada.  IFAW has grown into a charity that works across seas, oceans, and in more than 40 countries around the world.

 

IFAW is dedicated to building a world where animals and people can thrive together on a healthy planet. Through its work in the fields of biodiversity conservation and wildlife rescue, IFAW has had a major impact on ecosystems and communities around the world.

 

With a third of the charity’s income stemming from legacies, IFAW has been using FirstClass to streamline, manage, and monitor this crucial revenue stream from its UK office for over 10 years.  

 

However, its international counterparts were using disparate systems that were incurring significantly more administration time than would have been required when using one standardised legacy management platform.

 

In 2025, the decision to implement FirstClass across six new international territories was taken.


“Trying to understand pipelines, trends, and forecasting figures across seven different countries is a challenge in itself. This is further compounded when the data you’re trying to make sense of is being held in different platforms, software, and even manual spreadsheets. As IFAW’s UK office had enjoyed the transparency and single source of data afforded by FirstClass over a 10-year period, it made sense to roll the platform out across our global offices."


Georgina Hyman, Global Legacy Director at IFAW

The project


In the absence of a single, automated legacy management platform, IFAW’s Global Legacy Administration Manager, Niall Mason, was spending a significant amount of time reconciling key data relating to critical areas of legacy management from multiple sources.

 

Similarly, accessing sensitive information relating to contentious cases was difficult – if not impossible – to achieve.

 

Recognising the need for transformation, Georgina Hyman, Global Legacy Director, championed a strategic initiative to overhaul how IFAW’s legacies were managed worldwide. This included a strong internal commitment to professionalise and standardise legacy management processes across all regions.

 

In July 2025, FirstClass was rolled out to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States.



The result


Since incorporating FirstClass worldwide, IFAW has:


  • Standardised the way IFAW approaches legacy management and monitoring across seven countries worldwide


  • Created substantial time and administration savings – in many cases completing tasks that had previously taken days in a matter of hours


  • Implemented legacy management best practice across a global workforce, upskilled the global legacy administration team and professionalised legacy management across IFAW



  • Raised the profile of legacy administration internally and demonstrably reinforced the importance of IFAW’s legacy function amongst internal and external stakeholders


“We have faith in FirstClass, which is why we took the bold step of becoming the first multi-country charity to adopt the platform across multiple territories. During the global rollout, Niall worked closely with the FirstClass team, who were supportive and collaborative – particularly Shaun, from whom we had the sense that he wanted to see the international rollout be a success as much as we did! While there are still elements to refine as FirstClass evolves into an international platform, we now have a standardised way in which to manage and monitor legacies that eliminates risks associated with human error, and that can be scaled in line with the charity’s growth.”


Georgina Hyman, Global Legacy Director at IFAW


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