Corporate Giving

Since 1984, we have given to communities through The Coca-Cola Foundation, our nonprofit, 501(c)(3) philanthropic organization. Through The Coca-Cola Company, the Foundation and our 19 local and regional foundations worldwide, we partner with governments, NGOs and other organizations to support community improvement in four main areas: water stewardship, healthy and active lifestyles, community recycling and education. We also fund disaster relief in communities facing crisis.

Our goal is to give back at least 1 percent of our operating income annually to improve the living standards of people around the world. In 2010, we invested $102 million, an increase of 16 percent over 2009. Between 2002 and 2010, our Foundation gave a total of $273 million. Our total charitable contributions during that period—through our Foundation and contributions from our Company—were more than $690 million.

Following are some highlights of our giving.

In March 2011, we established the Coca-Cola Japan Reconstruction Fund with a total pledge of $33 million for ongoing relief and recovery efforts in Japan, including donations of more than 7 million cases of beverages to national and local government authorities and other community groups.

The Coca-Cola Company and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have collaborated for many decades, but in January 2011 we announced an expanded three-year partnership to enhance the humanitarian impact of our collaboration. The Coca-Cola Company is investing $2 million to support the IFRC’s work in disaster response and preparedness and public engagement. Separately, our Foundation is donating $1 million to the IFRC’s Disaster Response Emergency Fund, which provides immediate financial support to help Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies respond quickly to disasters around the world. In addition to monetary support, the partnership uses the Coca-Cola system’s production, distribution and marketing expertise to improve the partners’ joint disaster response and build public support for the efforts of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In China, we support World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Returning Water to People and Nature project in the Upper Yangtze River Basin. The project focuses on returning more than 1 billion liters of water annually by 2013. The project will also advance freshwater conservation across more than 300,000 hectares of forests and wetlands and will reforest a 150-hectare tract to protect water supplies and forest cover in the Upper Yangtze.

We have a strong partnership with the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. We support the Trash Free Seas Alliance, which focuses on ridding the ocean of harmful trash and debris through global cleanup efforts, education and community engagement. We also support the Regional Initiative for Inclusive Recycling for Latin America, a four-year effort to transform the recycling market in Latin America by improving the socioeconomic status of recyclers and their families; enhancing private sector roles so that recycling cooperatives thrive in a competitive market; and impacting public policy so that recycling cooperatives become part of local waste management systems.

We partner with the Girl Scouts of the USA to promote and deliver fitness and nutrition programs to underserved populations across the country. Through this effort, more than 135,000 girls will have the opportunity to benefit, and more than 50 million women and alumnae will be engaged to help solve the issue of childhood obesity in local communities.

In Italy, our Foundation supports MODAVI Onlus, which provides resources for nutritionists teaching healthy eating and active lifestyle classes to students and parents.

Our Foundation awarded six U.S institutions of higher learning with educational grants to promote study-abroad programs in China over the next four years. The grants support the U.S. State Department’s “100,000 Strong Initiative,” which aims to enhance and strengthen ties between the citizens of the United States and China in the areas of education, culture, sports, science and technology, and women’s issues. Recipient institutions include Columbia University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Morehouse College, the University of California–Los Angeles and the University of Texas, Austin.

The Foundation also awarded funding to five Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Louisiana to benefit women who are the first in their immediate families to attend college. Recipient institutions include Xavier University, Southern University at New Orleans, Grambling State University, Southern University at Baton Rouge and Dillard University.

Other programs supported by the Foundation include the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s “Liberty Today” initiative, which offers competitive scholarships for history teachers to sharpen their ability to make history relevant through electronic media, and the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation’s Peopling of America Center, which will tell the story of the immigration experience in America.

2010 Charitable Contributions¹

(MM = million)

¹The dollar amounts shown reflect direct charitable contributions from The Coca-Cola Company and The Coca-Cola Foundation. Other departments and operating groups within our Company and throughout the Coca-Cola system also make contributions to programs in their communities beyond what is shown here.

²Programs that address local needs, including civic initiatives, human services, arts and culture, and other areas.

In addition to giving through our Foundation, we also contribute cash, expertise and in-kind support to initiatives and partnerships intended to strengthen communities. Here are several initiatives we have been part of since our last sustainability report, the 2009/2010 Sustainability Review.

Engaging with Partners for a New Beginning

Partners for a New Beginning (PNB) is an alliance of public-private partnerships designed to deepen engagement between the United States and local communities abroad. PNB formed in response to President Obama’s 2009 speech at Cairo University in Egypt, which addressed a vision for a “new beginning” between the United States and Muslim communities. The initiative formally launched in April 2010 during the White House Summit on Entrepreneurship, a platform that explored the role of the private sector in creating economic growth and fostering entrepreneurship both in the United States and abroad.

Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, and Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, serve as PNB Vice Chairs. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright chairs the initiative, and a 14-member Steering Committee composed of public and private sector leaders based in the United States supports PNB’s work.

PNB has established local chapters in Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, the Palestine Authority Area, Tunisia and Turkey. Through the operating model of locally owned and locally driven partnership, local chapters assess community needs and priorities, creating an action plan of target initiatives to launch or to expand. Local and international partners collaborate based on the priorities identified. More than 70 projects are currently under way in the focus areas of education, exchange, economic opportunity, science and technology.

Our Company is actively engaged with PNB through participation in local chapters and projects. In Pakistan, for example, the Company partnered with International Relief & Development to assist the recovery of 500 of the most vulnerable small-holder farmer households. The project rehabilitates farmers and distributes seed to restart sugarcane crop cultivation, while providing farmers with training to increase their yields. This project has ensured a three-year cycle of sugarcane cultivation, giving families a chance for sustainable livelihoods and recovery from flood-induced losses.

Coca-Cola is supporting a number of additional projects, including a youth innovation summit with the Palestinian local chapter and a women’s economic empowerment initiative with the local chapter in Turkey.

To learn more, please visit the PNB website.

Also, in March 2011, we announced that we will dedicate $6 million to our Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN) to improve the lives of 250,000 women and girls in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and elsewhere by improving water and sanitation systems.

Helping to deliver medicine to Tanzania

One of our greatest assets in helping communities is our vast global supply and distribution network. Recognizing this, we began an initiative in August 2010, which taps into our logistics expertise to help resolve bottlenecks in the supply of critical medications to the people of Tanzania. We collaborated on the project with The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Accenture Development Partnerships.

Corporate giving is evolving. In the past, companies (including ours) that wanted to support communities were likely to write a check and wish benefiting communities well. Today, companies are increasingly called upon to effect change by lending expertise and taking part in the change process. While financial support is still crucial, a company’s continuing engagement along with application of its core competencies and assets is just as important, if not more so, for creating change that lasts. We expect our giving to continue to follow this trend. Our global system gives us an uncommonly widespread presence, enabling us to engage with communities large and small in more than 200 countries.

While we welcome opportunities for deeper engagement, they sometimes make our work more challenging. It is easy to issue a press release, unveil a plan and hand over a check. It is difficult to do the painstaking, messy work of actually collaborating with multiple partners, often in disparate places and cultures, to solve entrenched problems. Progress is sometimes slower than expected, and the most skillfully conceived initiatives sometimes fail. As we strive to build strong, vibrant communities, we can only pledge to bring the best of our resources to bear, to be clear about our intentions and transparent about our progress, and to learn from our achievements and our mistakes.