How Life Science Cares Is Pioneering A New Model For Competitors To Collaborate Around Business As A Force For Good

Life Science Cares in Action

Life Science Cares provides a platform for companies in the life sciences industry and their employees to make a difference. They make impactful grants to community nonprofits that are implementing research-driven solutions in the areas of survival, education, and economic sustainability and supercharge these grants with volunteer hours, donated goods, strategic support, and advocacy.

Their goal is to move the needle on issues of poverty while helping life science companies build connections with the community and internally between employees. Through volunteering; organizing in-office drives; and committing their time, talent, and treasure, so emerges a positive culture of doing good and having fun that benefits us all.

I sat down with the wise and passionate Mr. Rob Perez, Founder and Chairman, Life Science Cares to chat more about what this innovative nonprofit does to bring together companies that might be commercial competitors around a common cause, and how it all started.

Life Science Cares launched in Boston six years ago to activate the financial and human capital of the life sciences industry and partner with nonprofits to disrupt the cycle of poverty in the local communities. People who are attracted to working in this industry do so because they want to improve human health, and their insight was that they could tap into that wiring by providing an efficient vehicle for giving back, in order to positively impact those who are struggling with poverty.

Rob Perez, Founder and Chairman, Life Science Cares | KENT MEISTER 2020

We discussed the elements of the model that are the keys to its success. “The model that Life Science Cares uses is to find the best nonprofit partners in a local geography who work on impacting poverty in one of three areas - access to basic needs such as hunger, homelessness, health equity, opioid addiction, etc; access to education and access to opportunity - for example career development, job training, internship programs, economic development,” he explained. They select community partners they feel can best benefit from their industry’s human and financial resources, and they work with them to develop solutions that will effectively allow them to help more people. 

I asked him about the response from the Life Sciences industry. Since the very beginning, the response from leaders across industry, as well as their employees from all levels, has been, “How can we help?” “Our industry is filled with people who are used to solving complex and seemingly insurmountable challenges, so this was not a surprise. For example, the cost of running the organization and the LSC programs is funded by the personal contribution of hundreds of C-suite level leaders who make up our Board of Advisors. These board members all contribute their personal funds—and serve as LSC cheerleaders and evangelists—so that the funds we raise from companies and employees can go more directly into the communities we serve,” added Perez.

Life Science Cares provides a platform for companies in the life sciences industry and their employees to make a difference.

At LSC, they also realized along the way the significant benefits that this model provides to their corporate partners. “As you have elucidated so beautifully in your “Good is the New Cool” books, companies are increasingly aware of the importance their employees place on the company’s impact on the world,” Perez further explained. The vast majority of the companies in their industry, however, are too small to have their own formal corporate social responsibility program. For these companies, LSC has become an important solution as an outsourced CSR arm, allowing them to engage their employees in meaningful efforts to help the community, while satisfying the very real need to show employees and other constituents that the company cares about being a force for good in today’s world. For larger companies, LSC is an important partner, combining their efforts with the companies’ internal CSR teams to create a collective impact that exceeds what any of them could do alone.   

I asked about the plans for future expansion into other cities and what his dream scenario would be. After seeing the success they had in Boston, they began to receive inquiries from leaders across the country to bring LSC to their local geographies. They now have LSC organizations operating in San Diego, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and soon to be New York City; all of which have significant life sciences ecosystems. They also continue to build programs that fill gaps in their communities. For example, Project Onramp, a paid summer internship program for under-resourced and underrepresented college students, will scale to reach 1,000 students per summer by 2028. Thanks to an anonymous donor in Boston, they will be able to multiply the number of motivated young people they match with opportunities for work experience and building social capital.

“We are really proud of what we have accomplished, but we know that there is still so much work to do. We want to continue to grow this idea in order to help thousands more people who need it,” Perez said. That includes opening new chapters in other life science hubs, as well as adding more companies and nonprofit partners in the areas in which they already operate. As he pointed out, they have only scratched the surface on the help they can provide from this extraordinary industry.  

Life Science Cares launched in Boston six years ago to activate the financial and human capital of the life sciences industry and partner with nonprofits to disrupt the cycle of poverty in the local communities.

In conclusion we talked about the potential for this model to expand into other sectors and its inherent plug-and-play approach for any sector to adopt and adapt. “You asked me about my dream. Well my dream, quite simply, is to see this model, or a version thereof, adopted across industries, so that we can exponentially expand the amount of people we can help. There is no question that government plays a role in providing help and resources for those in need, but the private sector can and should be an important weapon in the war on poverty,” he expressed.

He would love to see different industries competing with each other to see how their collective effort, both human and financial, can be deployed to improve the lives of those who are struggling in their communities. It would be incredible if there was an “Entertainment Industry Cares” in LA and NYC, and a “Technology Industry Cares” in Silicon Valley, Austin and Atlanta, and so on. “I know there are many individual companies, and even some collective granting initiatives that exist within industries, but the power of this model is in uniting an industry to use its resources and unique talents to care actively, and to engage its workforce to come together to help those who are not participating in the incredible wealth creation that has benefited so many of us. That is my dream”, he shared.