Walking through the East Woods the other day, I stopped to enjoy the solitude of the forest. It became clear to me that this ecosystem provides fresh air and peacefulness to anyone that enters, and asks nothing in return. This is in contrast to most of our encounters in the business and technology world where ROI and WIIFM are constant questions asked by nearly all.
With the Winter Solstice and the Holiday Season upon us, I decided to look at the benevolent side of organizations and people, and to forget about the net income, growth rates, products launches, and strategic alliances for a little while.
Though one may think that corporations do good things because it will help the stock price, often these deeds are the results of individuals’ actions and not directly due to an edict. So I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that people and companies really do want (and enjoy) to do good things.
I had a look at a number of life science companies, and they have substantial efforts towards aiding local communities, assisting in educational programs, providing help for people in need, and supporting youth and families. Here are a number of companies and their programs so click the links to take a look at what they are doing.
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In addition, some large corporations have foundations that provide support across a wide area, and as you can see, they are pretty generous.
To further give some perspective on these numbers, I also want to point out the relative amounts that are given each year. A recent survey from CECP and The Conference Board showed that life science companies are far more generous than those in the financial sector or high-tech. The average giving for life science companies is 1.6% of pre-tax profits, while the financial firms gave 0.96% and high-tech 1.1%.
These numbers usually don’t make it to Businesswire or the quarterly reports, but they do show that the organizations that many of us are involved with, do a sizable number of good things. And that is something that we can all enjoy.