Gifts in Will and Legacy Gifts

Although we are unable to provide you with legal advice or directly assist you in writing your Will, we can provide you with key information to pass on to your solicitor or adviser.  

We want to ensure that your generous legacy gift can be used for your intended purpose and has the best possible long-term impact, for this reason strongly encourage you to contact us to discuss specific wording which suits your specific need.  

If you would like to learn more about a specific area, or aren’t sure which area you would like to support, we would love to discuss this further with you and if possible introduce you to some of our medical experts in that area.  

Please contact our Director of Philanthropy, Nicky Jacobs, on [email protected] and she would be delighted to have a confidential conversation about how you can have a lasting impact on our health and medical services.  

Choosing to leave a legacy gift is a testament to your values and how you want to be remembered.  

We understand that leaving a gift in your Will is a very personal and generous decision. Your first priority is your loved ones and it is important to talk with them about your wishes, and why you might choose to leave a gift to the NORTH Foundation or one of our beneficiaries.  

Our promise to you:  

• We will do our best to honour your wishes and ensure that your gift has a meaningful impact on the services we provide and the research we conduct.  
• Respect that writing your Will is important and personal to you and needs time.  
• Honour your privacy and acknowledge your generosity only with the recognition you are comfortable with.  
• Understand that circumstances may change and you may reconsider your bequest.  
• Ensure your gift is utilised in the most effective and meaningful way. 
• Continue to provide updates and the latest information on the area you have chosen to support. 

With your generosity our hospitals and healthcare services can continue to provide a lifetime of care to those in our community. Your gift will allow us to support, grow and improve our health services and medical research, and help guide future generations to a better tomorrow.

Our district health and medical services are built on the generosity of caring members of our community – people like you. 

Our legacy donors are a special group of donors that we refer to as our Northern Stars – guiding the future of health care and medical research for years to come. By choosing to leave a legacy gift in your Will, you will become an important part of our journey and join a community of visionaries committed to improving our healthcare services and medical research for generations to come.  

Mrs Eva Kolling OBE was our first Northern Star who in 1929 made a generous gift of £5,000 (equivalent to $644,400 in today’s AUD) in memory of her late husband Charles Kolling to fund medical research for the community. This generous donation was used to fund the construction of what was one of the first medical research laboratories in New South Wales – the Charles Kolling Memorial Laboratory. Upon her passing in 1941, Eva generously left a legacy gift in her will to continue and eventually expand the laboratory. The Kolling Institute of Medical Research is now the oldest medical research institute in New South Wales and conducts a wide variety of research focused on tackling some of the greatest medical challenges facing our world today. 

Similarly, Ryde Hospital was built as the result of generous philanthropic investment and community support. Although it was originally thought to be too expensive for a hospital to be created in Ryde, the community banded together to advocate and raise funds to purchase Denistone House (then an aged-care facility) to act as the first hospital building. This spirit of advocacy and giving back still forms a strong part of the community spirit in Ryde.  

It took incredible foresight, generosity, and passion for these members of the community to make the philanthropic investment that they did – especially during a time when such charity was unheard of. These gifts laid the foundation for the standard of hospital services and medical research available to the community for generations to come.  

For this reason, we consider these generous philanthropic pioneers to be our first Northern Stars – guiding the future of health and medical services for years to come.