Merck

Established in 1891, Merck is a global research-driven pharmaceutical firm.  The company discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets vaccines and medicines to address unmet medical needs around the world. Merck devotes extensive efforts to increase access to medicines through far-reaching programs that donate its medicines and also help to deliver them to the people who need them.

• Develop a comprehensive strategic review of the company’s corporate philanthropy portfolio, having been engaged by Merck’s Office of Contributions and the Merck Company Foundation, which totaled over $800 million in 2006, including $49 million in cash giving
• Develop areas of improvement and refinement in their existing portfolio, identifying increased alignment with the business, and researching new philanthropic initiatives for Merck to pursue. The project consisted of a range of internal and external stakeholder interviews, corporate philanthropy benchmarking, grants analysis, and deep-dive assessments of 15 separate Merck initiatives
• Identify a range of new initiative ideas, facilitate a criteria-driven process to develop a short list of initiatives, and performed additional internal and external research. FSG’s summary plan recommended a strategic framework, guiding principles, a more cohesive initiative portfolio, and operational improvements, including evaluation and communications approaches