For most charities, we recommend adopting three benchmarks. This allows you to maintain perspective over the long-term objective, as well as helping you to monitor our performance against the markets and industry ‘peer’ group.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales’ guidance on benchmarking performance (CC14) states that:
- trustees should agree performance measures so that all parties know what is expected of them
- establish monitoring and review arrangements to make sure the charity continues to be satisfied with performance
- information on how investments will be managed and measured should be set out in a statement of investment policy.
More detail can be found in the Charity and Investment Matters guide for trustees on gov.uk
For charities not based in England and Wales, we would recommend adopting this as best practice.