Eli Lilly and Company Foundation Pledges $25 Million to Combat Racial Injustice

Eli Lilly and Company commits 25,000 employee volunteer hours of service to help speed progress

INDIANAPOLIS, June 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and the Lilly Foundation announced today a pledge of $25 million and 25,000 volunteer hours over five years to decrease the burden of racial injustice and its effects on local and national communities of color. The commitments were made in conjunction with the Indy Day of Solidarity – We Stand Together virtual event, airing today, from 12-12:30 p.m. EDT. The event is sponsored by Lilly in partnership with the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper, Indianapolis’ oldest African American newspaper; Radio One, Indianapolis’ largest urban radio station; and WISH-TV, the city’s largest minority-owned television station.

“Lilly and the Lilly Foundation have a long history of standing beside our neighbors and communities,” said Tiffany Benjamin, president of the Lilly Foundation. “We are committed to action in addressing the systemic injustices in America that disadvantage people of color every day, with a special responsibility to Indianapolis, home of our headquarters for 144 years. As with our ongoing response to COVID-19, we’re confronting these injustices with the full force of our capabilities.”

The Lilly Foundation’s financial commitment over five years will help develop and support effective solutions to racial inequity and social injustice primarily in Indianapolis, its surrounding counties and nationally. The investments will focus on exposing and combatting hard truths about racial injustice and making grants to improve educational, health, criminal justice and social mobility outcomes for people of color. No grants requests are being accepted at this time.

Lilly is committing 25,000 employee volunteer service hours to help fight racial injustices. This commitment builds on Lilly’s ongoing efforts to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture within the company and in communities where it operates, and across the world.

Examples include:

• Employee Journeys: a series of research projects to understand the experience of women and minorities in our company. These Journeys have led to several initiatives to build in greater equality and cultural understanding across our company.
• Make it Safe to Thrive: the need for psychological safety was identified in our Journeys, and we have built an initiative around cultural literacy and building bridges among employees from different backgrounds.
• Significant progress in improving the numbers of women globally and minorities in the U.S. in management.
• Internal Lilly Day of Solidarity, which served as the genesis for the community-wide Indy Day of Solidarity occurring today.

“This is personal for me and for the whole company,” said David Ricks, Lilly chairman and CEO. “We commit to bringing people and organizations together to acknowledge the trauma of racial injustice in its many forms and create a call to action for lasting change. Lilly will continue to stand together in solidarity until all our communities, both here in the U.S. and globally, meet the standard we have set for our own company. The time for platitudes is behind us – the time for urgent action is now.”