GlaxoSmithKline and CAF partner on international giving
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the world's leading
research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. Our mission
is to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do
more, feel better and live longer.
Through GlaxoSmithKline’s Global Community Partnerships we
provide money, medicines, time and equipment to bring sustainable
improvements to health and education programmes of the communities
where we operate. We support global health programmes and local
community projects around the world, as well as donating medicines
and cash to support disaster and humanitarian relief efforts.
GSK has been quoted as the largest giver on the FTSE 100 for a
number of years. In 2007 our total community investment was valued
at £282m ($564m), equivalent to 3.8% of group pre-tax profit.
With a large and varied philanthropic investment portfolio, we
rely on CAF’s expertise and experience to manage our donations.
Working with CAF is a natural choice as it is able to handle all
manner of payments and in a typical year they manage over £1m on
behalf of GSK. These range from the high volumes of contributions
to local charities, made annually through our ‘Making a Difference’
reward scheme to support UK employees involved in charitable
causes, to the high-value donations for our global programmes. One
example is PHASE (Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education), a
simple, hand-washing programme that is dramatically improving
school health, reaching over half a million children in twelve
countries.
By giving through CAF’s Company Account we can be sure that CAF
supports our values by being transparent and trackable. At the same
time we know that giving through CAF represents value-for-money by
being tax-efficient.
Claire Hitchcock, Director, Europe and International, Global
Community Partnerships at GSK comments: “What we particularly like
about CAF is the due diligence they undertake to validate
charitable projects overseas. It’s both rigorous and incredibly
thorough which means that we can be assured we are giving to
genuine charitable projects and that we meet all HM Revenue &
Customs standards, as well as our own internal audit
requirements.
"On top of this, the staff we come into contact with at CAF are
friendly, approachable and knowledgeable.”