When Al Singer read that every night thousands of children across America went to bed hungry, he got mad. Al, president of Singer Nelson Charlmers, a Teaneck, New Jersey specialty and general agency, decided to do something about it. He founded a charity called PACS--People Against Children Starving. Working with insurance companies and other charities, PACS has now raised tens of thousands of dollars to feed needy children living in northern New Jersey and California.
All across the country, agents and agencies are deeply involved in their own charitable works, whether they have a nationwide reach, a regional flavor, or benefit just their home town. Like Al, these agents say they view these extracurricular activities, which range from sponsoring Little League teams to teaching young mothers to be better parents, as their way to give back to communities that have supported them.
"I have found something that I felt was giving back to the U.S.A. what it gave me," says Al, the son of eastern European immigrants.
Sure, you can write a check to help fight cancer or diabetes or lung disease. Thousands of agencies find themselves pitching in that way. But sometimes they want to raise their level of involvement. When they do, it often involves children and education. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, for instance, Jack Allen, chairman-CEO of Chandler, Frates & Reitz (CFR), says his agency decided it wanted to get involved in local schools.
"We decided to take a stand," says Jack. "When you have that stand, then it's easier to decide how you're going to get involved in charities."
For CFR, that involvement meant adopting a school in inner-city Tulsa. Every employee of the agency is allowed to take an hour a week of paid time off to help out at 560-student Sequoyah School. They'll help grade papers, teach gym class, "whatever the teacher wants," says Jack. He's even discussed with the kids the meaning of income taxes, and Operation Desert Storm.
CFR employees work at other schools in Tulsa, and at one they established a private foundation to help channel private dollars to public education. At the college level, the company sponsors annual scholarships and teacher excellence awards at Oklahoma State University's school of business.
Reaching out to schools in a slightly different way is The Flanders Group, of suburban Rochester, New York. There, founder and President Chris McVicker says the agency funded construction of team rooms in the men's and women's lockers at the local community college. And it also sponsors annual athletic scholarships for men and women college students.
"My accountant is still wagging his finger at me, but I feel it's so important" to support the college, says McVicker.
On the cultural front, Flanders supports Rochester's Geva Theatre with an annual donation. The theatre, in turn, invites area school children to performances and they try to tie the play to something the kids are studying. Flanders also supports an upstate New York camp that helps kids who are battling cancer, severe burns, or coping with the loss of a loved one.
Medical care for youngsters is certainly a noble cause, and a good way for agencies to get involved in their community. It was that kind of thinking that led Armstrong Robitaille Insurance Services, of Fullerton, California, to initiate a number of efforts aimed at teaching young mothers how to care for their children, and even send parents accused of child abuse or neglect to classes aimed at improving their parenting skills.
Frank Robitaille, president of Armstrong Robitaille, says he was on the board of a community aid organization in Orange County, California, when he learned that more than three million cases of child abuse or neglect are reported each year. Like Al Singer, in New Jersey, Robitaille says he was startled by this number, enough so that it prompted him to form a community help group that anyone in the insurance industry could join. The result was Insuring the Children, aimed at helping those young moms, or reducing the numbers of incidents of child abuse or neglect.
"We're trying to get the industry to be known for something in the community," says Robitaille. "Someday we'll be known for taking care of children."
Insuring the Children linked up with the Exchange Club, in suburban Los Angeles, and provided money and volunteers to the anti-child abuse and neglect efforts. The program has been so successful that it's been taken on as a full-time project by the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation in California and has spawned sub chapters in Omaha and Cincinnati. In Orange County alone, 500 members--nearly all of them affiliated with the insurance industry--have linked up with the program.
--Frank Robitaille, Robitaille Insurance Services, Fullerton, California
Armstrong Robitaille even spearheaded the drive to send $300,000 to a Los Angeles organization that works with needy teens once they've turned 18. At that age, they get cut off from welfare programs and many lack the job and social skills to make the transition to responsible adulthood.
Far from the barrios of east Los Angeles, Barb Van Haden is making her own contribution to the community. Barb operates Van Haden Insurance in Boscobel, Wisconsin, population 2,800. If you think there's not much to do in a small town, then follow Barb around for a week. Here's a list of just some of her community duties:
* member of a historic design committee for the city
* member of the board of the local hospital foundation
* huge supporter of high-school sports (her son is a three-sport letterman)
* member of the board of the local chamber of commerce
* heads the chamber's biggest annual fund-raiser, a quilting show
* board member of the cemetery association
Enough? Well, Barb also gets to blend her professional expertise with her community spirit four times a year when she goes to the local high school. There, she talks to the driver's education students about the ins and outs of auto insurance.
Doesn't this chew up a lot of her time?
"I never even thought about it," says Barb. "It's just something that you do."
Barb says that when you're in a small town and working with a small agency--there are three other women in the office, all of whom also are active in community service--that "you're actively involved in community affairs."
Perhaps wisely, Barb has steered clear of the political arena. Yes, she's involved with both the school board and city council, but in appointed positions that are advisory to those bodies. It's a fine line that agents walk between helping their town and getting directly involved in governmental affairs and politics, and she'd rather play it safe and not incur the wrath of any unhappy voters.
Barb Van Haden wasn't able to come up with a precise count of how many hours she and her office coworkers spend on community service. Nor, for that matter, could most of the other people interviewed for this story. That may be because the time they spend doesn't really matter as much as the personal reward they get from helping.
For those who do care, much of the money that a company donates to a charity is tax-deductible. Peter Calfee, a CPA in Cleveland, Ohio, says that for a corporation, 10% of its adjustable gross income (AGI) may be tax-deductible. Further, there may be ways to deduct for time and mileage that agents and agency employees tote up in the name of charitable work. But that seems to be a side issue, both for the people in this story and those whom Calfee has worked with.
"People who want to do that typically do it regardless of the tax break," says Calfee.
Above and beyond taxes, it makes good marketing sense to be involved. It's unlikely that any agent ever lost any business because he/she sponsored a Little League team.
Cary Raymond, co-founder of IDPR Group, a Boston consulting firm that helps corporations leverage their giving, says he doesn't see anything wrong with using charitable works and gift-giving as marketing tools.
"It's just good community relations," says Raymond. If there are three gas stations in one block, and one starts to offer a free, wintertime mechanical checkup to seniors, Raymond says that soon that station can develop a good reputation both among seniors and maybe even their children.
"Suddenly, this little gas station has something nobody else does," says Raymond. That sort of help proves that you don't have to be a Ford Foundation to make a difference. And it shows you can let the profit motive take a back seat to your community spirit. That's certainly been the case with Chris McVicker, in New York, and Jack Allen, in Oklahoma.
"There's zero financial reward," that he can directly tie to community help efforts in upstate New York, says McVicker. Still, he notes that "we're constantly being told by our customers how wonderful it is that Flanders Group is so constantly seen as being involved in the community."
"It's so easy to get locked into
making a profit...," says Jack Allen of the challenge for agencies to keep their eye on the world beyond insurance. "You've got to get outside of yourself." *
The author
Steve Dinnen is a journalist specializing in financial and insurance issues.
©COPYRIGHT: The Rough Notes Magazine, 1999