Save the Children and GSK is ‘most admired’ partnership for first time
This year marks the first time a non-retail tie-up has topped C&E Advisory’s most admired corporate-NGO partnerships barometer.
Save the Children’s partnership with GSK is the most admired.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Save the Children have topped C&E Advisory’s Corporate-NGO Partnerships Barometer in 2016, with 11% of respondents citing it as the most admired partnership. Previous winners, Boots and Macmillan and Marks & Spencer and Oxfam, have dropped back into second and third places respectively.
In order to create the ranking both business and charities were asked which partnerships and organisations they most admire and why, in an unprompted voting exercise.
The GSK and Save the Children partnership began in 2013 with the aim of sharing expertise and resources to save one million children’s lives.
It focuses on improving access to basic healthcare, through prevention and treatment, training and equipping health workers in the poorest communities, developing child-friendly medicines and working at local and global levels to call for stronger child health policies.
Most admired partnerships
| GlaxoSmithKline/Save the Children | 10.9% |
| Boots/Macmillan Cancer Support | 7.6% |
| Marks & Spencer/Oxfam | 6.5% |
| Tesco/Diabetes UK/British Heart Foundation | 4.3% |
| Barclays/CARE International | 3.3% |
| British Gas/Shelter | 3.3% |
| Sainsbury’s/Comic Relief | 3.3% |
| Land Rover/Red Cross | 2.2% |
| Network Rail/The Samaritans | 2.2% |
| Pampers/Unicef | 2.2% |
“We invest in things that will achieve impact,” says Andy Wright, vice-president for global health programmes at GSK. “Save the Children has a tremendous track record in implementing programmes that really achieve impact and that impact is children.”
Wright says the partnership therefore resonates highly with staff, many of whom have children, he adds: “It’s a health priority that everybody can engage with.”
Manny Amadi, CEO of C&E Advisory, says: “It is interesting that [GSK and Save the Children] is the leading partnership because it’s the first non-retail sector type partnership that tops the list. For the last several years it has been M&S, which is much more visible on the high street.”
“We invest in things that will achieve impact,”
Andy Wright, VP for global health programmes, GSK
Amadi adds: “It speaks volumes and credit to them that it is as recognised and acclaimed as it is. [The relationship is not a] one-year wonder or transactional, [it’s] a strategic relationship built over a period of time, which allows time for the parties to get to know each other to build a deeper relationship.”
The partnership is admired for its ambition to create real and measurable change and its clarity of purpose, according to the barometer.
It has reached over 1.3 million children. More than 23,500 under-fives have been fully immunised, over one million children have been screened for malnutrition and over £1.8 million raised to date by GSK employees from over 70 countries, with every £1 matched by the company.
