Quick answer: 1,756 legacy donation campaigns on LaunchGood, explicitly named for legacy, memory, or honor, have raised $4.6 million in the past two years. The largest category isn't what you'd expect, mosque and community building leads, followed by education, then food and water access.
What is a legacy gift? What people actually choose when they're honoring someone
We looked specifically at campaigns whose names include "legacy," "in memory of," "memorial," or "in honor of," 1,756 legacy donations in total, and the breakdown by cause is genuinely telling:
Real examples from the data include campaigns like "Honouring My Brother, Zackeria," "The Sara Nanabawa Legacy Fund," and "A Son's Legacy for his Father," genuine, specific tributes, not generic templates. Several campaigns on the platform also offer named reward tiers for this exact purpose, options like "Legacy Builder" and "Legacy Partner," letting donors contribute at a level that carries real weight.
Two legacy giving categories worth knowing about, even though they're not always labeled "legacy"
Not every dedication-style gift gets an explicit "in memory of" name, but two categories function as Sadaqah Jariyah just as clearly:
Orphan sponsorship is the single highest-performing cause on the entire platform by average donation size, $5,203 per campaign, 44% above the platform average. Sponsoring an orphan in someone's name, living or deceased, is one of the most direct ways to create ongoing reward tied to a person's memory.
Water wells average $4,311 per campaign across 2,092 campaigns, $8.1 million total. We've written in detail about what makes a water well genuinely Sadaqah Jariyah and how much one actually costs, if you're weighing this specific option.
Why this matters if you're deciding how to honor someone
The data makes one thing clear: there isn't a single "correct" legacy gift. A mosque, a scholarship, an orphan sponsorship, a water well, all of them show up as real, sustained legacy giving categories with genuine donor commitment behind them, not just a handful of outliers. What matters more than which category you choose is that the gift is something lasting, something that keeps generating benefit long after the transaction itself.
If you're ready to give a legacy donation in someone's name, two of the strongest legacy giving categories are open right now:
Sponsor an orphan in someone's honor →
Dedicate a water well to a loved one →
This post uses aggregated campaign data from LaunchGood's platform, July 2024–June 2026, covering campaigns with reported donation totals. Figures should be read as directional, not exhaustive.
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