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Community investment

GSK makes donations of money, medicines, time and equipment to support good causes. The strategy behind our community investment is improving health and education in under-served communities. We support public health initiatives and local community projects around the world and donate medicines to support disaster relief efforts and impoverished communities.

Community investment is not linked to short-term business benefits and is not intended to create commercial markets for GSK. But it does support our reputation by demonstrating our commitment to tackling healthcare challenges. We believe that using some of our profits to benefit under-served communities is part of being a responsible company.

In 2005, our total community investment was valued at £380 million ($691million), equivalent to 5.6% of pre-tax profits. Donations are made at group level and by individual GSK sites to support local communities.

Our objective is to ensure that projects are sustainable in the long-term and will continue once GSK funding comes to an end. Most of our community investment is made through non-profit organisations that are experts in the field of healthcare delivery and education. This helps ensure our giving is targeted at the communities that need it most.

Information on our community investment programmes to increase healthcare capacity in developing countries is included in the Access to medicines section of this report. This covers our major public health initiatives tackling lymphatic filariasis (LF), HIV/AIDS, malaria, and diarrhoea-related disease.

This section provides information on our other community investment programmes in 2005. It covers:

• A breakdown of our charitable donations in 2005.
• Donations of medicines for humanitarian relief including natural disasters.
• Community partnerships - local support provided at corporate level and by GSK sites.
• Our support for science education in the US and UK.
• Employee involvement in communities.

Awards in 2005
During 2005, we received the first Annual Scrip Award for Corporate Social Responsibility for GSK’s role in the Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) elimination programme. We also received a Business in the Community ‘Big Tick’ for our UK Science Education Programme and our support for Barretstown. We were a finalist in a number of other awards including:

• The Business in the Community International award for the LF Elimination Programme
• The African Investor Award 2005 for GSK’s support of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) initiative in Africa
• The US Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship award for our US education programme.

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