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Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Community investment

In 2008, our global community investment was £124 million ($229 million) compared with (restated) £109 ($219 million) in 2007, an increase of 13 per cent. Just over half of this comprises product donations and this is the first year we have valued donations using cost (average cost of goods) rather than the wholesale acquisition price (WAC).

Our new approach to valuing donations is a more accurate reflection of the true cost to GSK and is therefore more transparent. We believe we are the first pharmaceutical company to adopt this practice. We will continue to also report the WAC value of our donations for benchmarking purposes.

We belong to the UK’s London Benchmarking Group (LBG) and the US Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP). LBG guidelines report product donations at cost, whereas CECP guidelines report product donations at market value. For comparative purposes the total value of giving in 2008 using WAC for products would be £343 million ($634 million) compared with £282 million ($564 million) in 2007.

The giving figure is built up in the following way:

Method of giving (£ million)

Breakdown of cash giving (%)

Our product donations are made through three main programmes:

• Our Patient Assistance Programmes to support low-income patients in the US, totalling £56 million (at cost) in 2008 
• Humanitarian product donations to under-served communities in 118 countries, including people affected by the natural disasters in Burma and China, totalling £5m (at cost) in 2008
• Donation of 266 million albendazole tablets for the lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination programme. In 2008 we announced we would double our manufacturing capacity for albendazole tablets to 600 million tablets per year by 2010 from the current 300 million, to meet the growth of the LF programme, especially in India. As a result, our donations of albendazole tablets will increase significantly from 2009 onwards

We already publish data about our charitable grants made to patient groups in our European, Emerging Markets and Asia Pacific regions. We are further increasing transparency by publishing details of all our charitable grants over £10,000 ($20,000). Find out more about our grants.

GSK was one of 21 companies and the only manufacturing company to be awarded the new CommunityMark, following independent assessment, for outstanding community investment. The Mark, created by Business in the Community, is endorsed by the UK government and voluntary sector leaders. It was given for our work at local and national level in the UK as well as for our larger international programmes.