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Corporate Social Responsibility

Communities

Our giving

Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. One way that we fulfill our Mission is by being a socially responsible community partner. Our giving strategy includes in-kind support, colleague donations, and university student scholarships.

 

Through our non-profit partnerships, we’re able to extend our reach and empower our employees to work with organizations that represent causes they care about. Our philanthropic contributions and in-kind donations support research in developing countries, disaster relief efforts, and more. We also help students pursue their career aspirations by funding university scholarship programs and providing in-kind donations that support cutting-edge laboratory experiences for secondary and post-secondary learners.

 

2019 impact at a glance

$3.3M

In-kind donations

$1.8M

Employee & matching gift donations

2K+

Non-profit organizations supported through donations

282

University scholarships

In-kind donations

Corporate giving

We are uniquely positioned to offer support to those who make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer, but who don’t have access to cutting-edge technologies. The instruments, consumables, and services we donate to organizations around the world benefit many causes, including supporting researchers in developing countries, advancing research into personalized medicine, and promoting STEM education through laboratory experimentation. Below we feature two of our partner organizations who, with our generous support, are making the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. 

Quotation marks
"Healthcare simply isn’t an option in many parts of the world, either because it doesn’t exist or isn’t affordable. We are able to serve these communities because of support from companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific.”
Tom Velnosky
International Programs
Biomedical Systems Manager / Mercy Ships

Our partnership with Mercy Ships

In ports around the world, Mercy Ships provides free medical care, including life-saving surgeries, to people living in areas where medical care doesn’t exist or isn’t readily available. Their floating hospitals bring volunteer medical teams and sterile operating rooms directly to people who may otherwise go without care. To serve communities around the world properly, Mercy Ships needs to maintain state-of-the-art facilities.

Over the past decade, Thermo Fisher has contributed laboratory refrigerators, freezer units, and consumables to Mercy Ships. In 2019, we also donated our Thermo ScientificTM Smart-VueTM Wireless Monitoring Solutions, allowing Mercy Ships to monitor the performance of their refrigerators and freezer units remotely.

Our partnership with Seeding Labs

Seeding Labs believes scientific talent is everywhere and that too many scientists lack the resources to reach their full potential. Thermo Fisher has partnered with Seeding Labs since 2011 to provide essential equipment donations benefiting researchers in the developing world. In 2019, Thermo Fisher implemented a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine trade-in program benefitting the Seeding Labs program. A PCR machine is one of the most requested instruments from researchers receiving Seeding Labs Instrument Access grants. During the trade-in campaign, customers who upgraded their older model machines received free plastic consumables and a two-year service warranty free of charge. Their older model machines were then donated to Seeding Labs. Through this four-month promotion, Thermo Fisher was able to donate 29 PCR machines.

Dr. Gama Bandawe of the Malawi University of Science and Technology was among those talented scientists who received an Instrument Access grant. He plans to use equipment donated by Thermo Fisher to research the HIV virus, which has had a devastating impact on his country. 

Scholarships

As part of our giving strategy, we have established two scholarship programs.

The first is a merit-based scholarship program for the children of our full-
time employees to encourage their pursuit of higher education and support their academic goals. The Thermo Fisher Scientific Scholarship Program for Children of Employees is a competitive program that provides financial grants to eligible children who are pursuing a college degree. The program offers renewable scholarships covering up to four years of full-time undergraduate study leading to a bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) at accredited post-secondary institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Aligned with our focus on STEM education, our second scholarship program supports students studying STEM subjects at one of our partner universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the U.S., Imperial College London in the U.K., and Fudan University in China.

Matching gifts

Colleague giving

To promote the generous spirit of our colleagues, our Charitable Giving Program provides a platform that allows them to easily contribute to causes that they feel passionately about. Our colleagues can make direct donations to a charity of their choice, create a fundraiser – mobilizing greater support for a cause – or contribute to a disaster relief campaign. Through our Employee Matching Gift program, we help colleagues make an even bigger impact by matching their contribution to eligible charities by 50%. 

$1.8M

Employee & matching gift donations

Science festivals

As part of our strategy to inspire primary and secondary learners in STEM subjects, Thermo Fisher supports multiple sciences and engineering festivals in cities where we have a large employee base including Boston, Mass., Cambridge, Mass., San Francisco, Calif., San Diego, Calif.,

and Washington, D.C. These events are free to the public through the support of corporate sponsorships and feature hundreds of hands-on STEM education activities appropriate for the entire family. At the Thermo Fisher booth, our colleagues provide festival attendees an opportunity to participate in hands-on science activities that are part of our signature Innovation Nation program. 

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