Lazarus started as a grass roots event within Brendan Wood International. Each year, the firm's partners sent cheques to employees suppliers and friends with the simple request that they "give the Lazarus money to a cause close to their hearts without restriction, any all religious and secular charities chosen by our friends were in". Lazarus still promotes this idea for any individual company. In fact, Lazarus Partners now offer assistance and support to other companies who wish to instal that Lazarus program which became such an inspiration to so many at Brendan Wood over the years. In 2007, after almost thirty years of giving, Lazarus deliberately narrowed the spectrum of it's research into charities. The purpose of so doing was to be able to select and "recommend" some explicit choices to others, to open up the Lazarus partnership campaign to a limited number of charities who met the direst and most indisputable urgencies and to better leverage the expertise of our small group. Now Lazarus Partners seek out humanitarian organizations which operate at the" life and death nexus, effectively saving lives". This sharper focus enables the group to better manage it's volunteer resources and meaninfully quantify it's efforts. While the original grass roots campaign continues at Brendan Wood and hopefully at other Lazarus partner companies in future, there is a now a core group of organizations which effectively save lives in situations of urgent need. While the Lazarus Partnership also supports many community, medical research, long term prevention and support based initiatives each year, lifesaving is the basic focus of Lazarus' research and investigation.
