Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Johnson & Johnson companies are numerous and spread throughout the world. Its charitable arm focuses its annual grantmaking on an array of international health and development causes.
IP TAKE: As a global manufacturer of health and hygiene products, Johnson & Johnson conducts the majority of its grantmaking through a health lens with a concentration on health equity. The foundation’s grantmaking is comprised of in-kind donations, but it gives a handful of cash grants. Johnson & Johnson’s remaining non-cash giving goes toward private voluntary organizations engaged in medical work or disaster relief in the developing world. Additionally, many of the cash grants Johnson & Johnson does make are through its generous employee donation matching program. Nevertheless, the Johnson & Johnson Foundation manages to make a significant number of annual cash grants. Most of these address support for women and children, preventing disease, and strengthening the healthcare workforce.
Johnson & Johnson is not a particularly transparent or approachable foundation. While it publicizes select initiatives on its website, it does not maintain a grants database and its grantmaking policies are rather vague. Since it does not accept unsolicited requests for funding or provide a reliable way to contact the organization, grantseekers are going to have to network heavily here. As well, it looks like the J&J Foundation primarily invests in large organizations that can scale.
PROFILE: The Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Johnson & Johnson, a multinational corporation that consists of around 250 operating companies around the world. The foundation aims to “support the people on the front lines at the heard of delivering care, so that communities and health systems have the ability to address the health needs of the world’s most vulnerable people.” The foundation is also dedicated to achieving the the United Nations Development Programme’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and gives widely to disaster relief, and refugee and humanitarian aid efforts. Areas of funding interest include strengthening the healthcare workforce, empowering healthcare advocates and leaders, maternal and newborn health and using technology to transform healthcare delivery systems. Its main program areas are currently Global Community Impact, Global Public Health, and Global Environmental Sustainability.
Grants for Global Health, Mental Health, and Diseases
The foundation’s support for Global Health approaches public health through a wide range of strategies, including “world-class research and development, global strategy and external affairs capabilities, and local implementation and impact teams.”
Its efforts focus on studying, treating, and preventing HIV, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Mental Health, Ebola, Global Surgery, and Antimicrobial Resistance around the world.
The foundation is particularly interested in “the development of new drug regimens, support[ing] the strengthening of healthcare systems and break[ing] down the barriers to access in resource-limited settings.” The foundation’s epidemic and pandemic work includes efforts to combat Ebola, ZIKA, H1N1, HIV, COVID-19, and other diseases.
The foundation also makes health grants through its Women and Children program, including for maternal and newborn health, fistula recovery, and ensuring women’s access to health care.
Previous health projects and programs the foundation supports include $500 million over four years to combat the HIV and Ebola epidemics. Johnson & Johnson also partnered with the World Health Organization to provide 1.4 billion doses of an anti-parasite medication against STH, an infection caused by intestinal worms, and donated 700,000 doses of an ebola vaccine to the DRC and the Republic of Rwanda.
Finally, Johnson & Johnson conducts public health giving through its Global Environmental Sustainability program. While the majority of this program centers around reducing the carbon footprint of the company’s products and global operations, it also commits to Advancing Environmental Health Equity.
With the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and the National Medical Association, J&J has announced the Climate and Healthy Equity Fellowship, which “empowers physicians of color to become leaders in climate and health equity education, advocacy and policy solutions.” It also partners with Americares and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to “bolster climate resilience at clinics that serve people with limited access to care in communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”
Grants for Global Development, Women and Girls
Johnson & Johnson conducts broad giving for global development through its Global Community Impact organization, which works to “build community-driven solutions, spark life-changing innovation and elevate ideas from individuals around the world.” Among its current priorities are:
Center for Health Worker Innovation: a $250 million, 10-year commitment to “catalyze efforts to respond to the human resources crisis in global health and build a thriving health workforce.” It supports a range of initiatives to focused on “equipping nurses, midwives and community health workers across the globe with the skills, resources and support they need.”
Impact Ventures: an impact fund managing a “global portfolio of early-stage companies and partners working to accelerate access to affordable and quality healthcare for all.”
Health Equity: a commitment to address racial disparities in health outcomes through “community health capacity building,” “community education & engagement,” “culturally competent care,” and “diversity in clinical trials.”
Talent for Good: a program for J&J employees encouraging them to “participate in local volunteer activities, mentor young leaders or engage in immersive pro bono assignments worldwide.” This is J&J’s main employee engagement initiative.
People in Crisis: J&J’s main disaster relief funding program, collaborating with “international relief partners and local affiliates to assess and rapidly respond—in many cases within hours—to critical health needs.” This initiative provides support in the form of both monetary donations and in-kind provisions of “consumer, pharmaceutical and medical products.”
Johnson & Johnson’s Saving and Improving the Lives of Women and Children program broadly supports women’s health, education and employment, and anti-poverty initiatives. The foundation’s women’s health initiative largely involves maternal and newborn health.
For example, it has partnered with UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank and U.N. Women to “train skilled birth attendants in emergency obstetric and newborn care to ensure better outcomes for more mothers and babies in Ethiopia and Tanzania.”
It has also supported UNFPA, Fistula Foundation, CCBRT, Direct Relief International, One by One in Kenya, Mercy Ships, the International Society of Fistula Surgeons, Women and Health Alliance International, and Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to “prevent fistula through quality obstetric care, increased access to fistula repair surgery, and help to women with fistula reintegrate into their communities and regain control of their lives.”
Johnson & Johnson also funds efforts to combat poverty, and expand women’s access to education and employment in the developing world. As with all of its programs, health is at the center of the foundation’s support for women.
Its anti-poverty work invests in integrated microfinance initiatives that “couple financial services with health education, health services or other development tools [that] can mitigate health risks to a microcredit client and her family.”
Past grantees include Freedom From Hunger and Microcredit Summit. While the foundation does not prioritize funding for education and employment initiatives, it has supported the Improving Girls’ Secondary Education and Employment opportunities program in Tanzania, which provides “internships and mentoring for girls in seven secondary schools to help bridge the gap between school and employment, and continuing to support their professional development and vocation training in fields such as nursing, community health development, hotel management and teaching.”
Important Grant Details:
Johnson and Johnson’s grants typically range from $25,000 to $100,000, but it makes a handful of grants over $1 million. At times, Johnson & Johnson will give multiple smaller grants to a single organization to support projects in different specialty areas. The foundation does not maintain a grants database on its website.
Johnson & Johnson conducts grantmaking around the world, with a focus on developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited requests for funding.
Its funding priorities are selected by teams of senior executives, and a corporate contributions committee (CCC) provides strategic guidance for foundation spending.
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