REFLECTIONS & RESOLUTIONS
Christmas 2007

Last Christmas was a landmark for the Lazarus Partnership. For the first time, uniform BWI standards of performance and achievement were applied to our selection of charitable organizations. Candidate charities were invited to address six critical selection criteria designed to identify organizations which operate at the highest levels of transparency and accountability. These criteria reflect our twenty-six years as a charity sponsor and thirty-five year experience as an originator of world class performance standards in the capital markets. The response from charities was as diverse as the organizations themselves. In all cases the depth of our conversation intensified. Some relished the newly applied Lazarus Selection benchmarks while others found them ‘awkward’, ‘new’, ‘hard to respond to’ and so forth.

However, a year later, these criteria seem to have impressed most charitabe organizations in a positive manner. Why?

When carefully considered, the Lazarus criteria have a hidden driver of credibility, insofar as these criteria were originally selected to establish a charity’s delivery system and its efficiency in meeting the needs of the ultimate client. Some charitable institutions focus on the well-heeled, socially influential donor. Others see their most important constituents as corporations pressured to pressure other corporations to allocate major gifts. Some charities assign considerable weight to the celebrities who endorse them and the public image of the organization.

Lazarus Partners criteria remain fixed upon the interest of the ultimate client, namely the person we are trying to serve and his/her dignity. In the world of giving, we feel we cannot go far wrong by heralding the importance of the voice of the client. Today’s Lazarus, beloved by God, is often ‘voiceless’ amongst us. Lazarus Partners makes real efforts to fill that gap.

Brendan Wood