Standard Chartered donates $6m in challenge to blindness charity
Howard Lake | 5 November 2004 | News
International bank Standard Chartered has inspired a major collaboration by blindness charities by challenging them to implement a massive campaign which the bank would fund to the tune of $6 million.
Earlier this year Standard Chartered’s chief executive Mervyn Davies challenged Sight Savers International to restore over the next three years the sight of 1 million people suffering from avoidable blindness. If it could, then the bank would provide the funding to do so. The charity was given two weeks to respond.
Sight Savers quickly secured agreement from five other related charities, and the Seeing is Believing partnership was eventually sealed.
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Sight Savers already had a link with Standard Chartered as it had been the company’s chosen charity for its 150th anniversary year in 2003. But this partnership is on a much bigger scale, and is a more detailed commercial partnership. Indeed, a business plan was drawn up by consultants from McKinsey, donating their services.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.