"A Wake-Up Call to All of Us." Inside a Chicago-Based Pharma Company’s Racial Equity Giving
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Black lives matter protest in chicago in June. Chicago-based Abbvie recently announced decisions on $50 million in racial equity funding. Untitled Title/shutterstock
The best way for corporations to address racial justice is an open question. Is it sparking real conversations? Leadership buy-in? Diversifying decision-making to lift underrepresented voices? Building broader communities in and outside the ivory tower?
Maybe it’s all of that and more. Building a culture of inclusion starts at the top, but takes the concerted effort of the entire organization.
Throwing money at the issue isn’t the only answer—although this year saw a flurry of racial justice commitments from corporations. Even before the end of July, Candid identified $4.2 billion in racial equity funding in 2020, already surpassing the total of $3.3 billion it captured between 2011 and 2019. Corporate giving accounted for just 6% of that before 2020. In July, it hovered around 80%. Pledges have continued to pour in since the summer.
One company, AbbVie, which DiversityInc listed among the top 50 Companies for Diversity this year, is demonstrating both leadership and carefully considered philanthropy.
In early December, its foundation announced decisions on a $50 million, five-year commitment to achieving long-term, sustainable racial equity outcomes. That’s in addition to a $5 million donation it made to the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in June. All in, AbbVie reports investments of $175 million in programs that support diverse communities in the last seven years.
A company foundation
AbbVie is a research-driven biopharmaceutical company that was established in 2013 as a spin-off of Abbott Labs. Headquartered in Chicago, its 47,000 employees work across 70 countries to find and deliver medicines that tackle tough health care challenges in therapeutic areas from oncology to women’s health.
The company sponsors two philanthropic foundations.
The AbbVie Foundation’s mission is to make progress on access to education, healthcare systems, and building strong communities for underserved groups. Since its founding, its programs have served 18 million people in 90 countries. U.S. grants topped $26 million in 2018.
The AbbVie Patient Assistance Foundation helps tens of thousands of Americans living below the poverty line to receive AbbVie medications and diabetes care products free of charge. Total U.S. patient assistance for 2018 reached a value of nearly $1.5 billion.
A commitment to equity
The company’s commitment to racial equity starts at the top. In June, as the Black Lives Matter movement was rising, AbbVie’s chairman and CEO, Richard Gonzalez, confirmed the company’s commitment to racial equity in a letter to all employees.
In it, he called the events surrounding the George Floyd murder a “wake-up call to all of us” and issued a call to action, asking all corners of the AbbVie community to “clearly and loudly” reject all forms of racism “whenever we see or experience them.” He appealed to colleagues, citing the need to “reach down inside ourselves and ask, do I have bias, conscious or not? Can I do more to be inclusive? Am I showing up as an ally? Can I make my rejection of these behaviors clearer?”
Gonzalez continued, “I want to make my intentions here absolutely clear—this isn’t just a program, this is an absolute commitment that I am making, my leadership team is making, and we need all of you to make, as well.”
The goal, he said, was to make AbbVie a role model for fairness and inclusion for “diverse communities in general, but the Black community more specifically.” Gonzalez then created two senior-level positions on his leadership team to drive internal and external change. The company immediately donated $5 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Equal Justice Initiative to address gaps in the criminal justice system. And its foundation committed to a five-year, total $50 million “long-term, multi-faceted program that will seek to bring lasting and real change at the community level,” promising more details in the months to come.
Karen Hale, one of the two leaders tapped to drive change, then led the company’s outreach to community and nonprofit leaders, and listened to a range of approaches to overcoming barriers of systemic racism. Internally, AbbVie sought the input of its Black Business Network and Human Resources’ Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team, as well as other employees that were eager to share their ideas and perspectives.
Feedback consistently led to a focus on three areas where AbbVie felt it could have a meaningful impact: providing educational and workforce-related opportunities, and reducing health disparities. The process then identified more than 40 potential nonprofit partners, both new and existing. After the vetting process, six were selected to become part of the initiative.
All of the commitments extend over five years, and all are funded by the foundation. Four are new partnerships. Work with the two organizations it’s partnered with before—Direct Relief and University of Chicago Medicine—were in other areas like research. And while they backed some local programming, funding was not limited to AbbVie’s footprint.
Six partners
AbbVie took a two-pronged approach to investments: scaling programs with proven success, and seeding programs responding to the growing demand for change.
The foundation chose two partners to promote better healthcare outcomes for Black Americans and other underserved cohorts. It invested $8 million in the University of Chicago Medicines Urban Health Initiative to fund local teams of community health workers providing access and resources to Chicago’s South Side, where residents are 77% Black. And it granted $10 million to Direct Relief to launch the Fund for Health Equity, which will support improved services at federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), and free and charitable clinics in underserved Black communities across the country.
It also chose two partners to advance workforce development opportunities for Black Americans. A $7 million investment in the National Urban League will fund its Project Ready Mentor Program, which focuses on increasing postsecondary success for youth ages 11 to 18 in 11 cities. A $10 million investment in the United Negro College Fund will provide seed funding to reduce barriers in health professions.
The foundation will expand opportunities for youth and young adults with a $10 million grant to Year Up for a training and internship program for 200 18- to 26-year olds, and $1.5 million to Providence St. Mel School to fund scholarships for high schoolers from the South Side based on financial need and academic potential.
The AbbVie Foundation is also setting aside $3.5 million to allow for increased employee matching gifts, which are always an important way of boosting funding and widening circles of support. In early 2020, the foundation doubled the usual dollar-for-dollar match for nonprofits working to address COVID-19 and racial equality. Now, that’s been increased. For every dollar employees invest in nonprofits that foster racial equity, the foundation will invest $3—and that applies to all employees globally through 2025. The site links to more than 8,000 vetted organizations that self-identified as civil rights nonprofits, including its five selected partners. But it’s open to employee suggestions, and will include them as qualified.
Standing out from its peers
Even among the many corporate funding commitments of 2020, AbbVie’s work stands out. But other pharmaceutical companies have started programs of their own.
Over at Pfizer, CEO Albert Bourla’s letter focuses on “Opportunity Parity” goals to improve minority and leadership representation. It also added $3 million in grants to its COVID-19 work specifically to address “healthcare disparities in the African American community” and $5 million for social justice disparity work.
For its part, Gilead Sciences launched a Racial Equity Community Impact Fund in December to “support high-impact organizations working to tackle racial inequities affecting Black communities across the U.S.” Ten million in grants will support 20 organizations over three years, including Morehouse College, 100 Black Men of Metropolitan Houston and the East Oakland Youth Development Center. It’s also addressing increasing the ranks of internal diversity goals through its Advancing Black Leadership Strategy, which focuses on hiring and internal advancement.
And in June, the Amgen Foundation committed $7.5 million to the cause of racial justice and equal opportunity, committing $2.25 million each to four national organizations: Race Forward, Echoing Green, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Equal Justice Initiative.
Only time will tell how pharma and its philanthropy can level opportunity for all. But AbbVie’s work may be a blueprint worth following.
