Jeans Fridays
Indiana-based Black & Ramer Insurance supports a program called Jeans Friday. On Fridays, employees wear jeans and donate to a different charity each month. The owners then match what employees donate for the month. They love to keep it local and recently helped paint a home with other volunteers for one of the agency’s clients.
Cal’s Angels
Illinois-based Crum-Halsted Insurance contributes in many ways but one special annual effort supports an organization founded by one of its own employees. After Tom Sutter, Crum-Halsted’s vice president of sales, lost his 13-year-old son to cancer in August 2006, his amily started a pediatric cancer organization, called Cal’s Angels, to grant the wishes of kids fighting cancer and to financially assist their families. The agency is also a partner with the Feed My Starving Children Program, where employees spend time packing and shipping food.
Chicago: Alper Services
Chicago’s Alper Services LLC has been committed to many organizations since 1966. In 2014, the staff supported the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Lambs Farm, Chicago Gateway Green, Leland School, UCAN, La Rabida Children’s Hospital, Orchard Village and New Hope Center. For the first time in 2014, Alper sponsored its own team in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer on Mother’s Day. This was the fourth year that Alper collaborated with insurance carrier Chubb to prepare Thanksgiving turkeys and gift baskets for families from two nonprofits. As the year drew to a close, Alper partnered with its client Weinstein Meats in collecting toys for 300 school children at George Leland Elementary School.
The Charity Challenge: Marsh Minneapolis
Each summer, Marsh & McLennan Agency’s Minneapolis office challenges its carriers to donate to Children’s Hospitals & Clinics of Minnesota and College Possible. In 2014, the office added St. David’s Center for Child and Family Development to the mix. Employees donate as well. All donations receive a 30 percent match from Marsh & McLennan.
Specialty Insurance Managers Inc.
Austin, Texas-based Specialty Insurance Managers Inc. employees assist in everything from serving meals at Angel House Soup Kitchen and Ronald McDonald House, participating in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, collecting donations for troop care packages, performing annual random acts of kindness and adopting grandparents who could use an extended family.
Philadelphia Day of Giving
More than 800 members of Greater Philadelphia’s insurance and risk management communities dispersed across the city and suburbs on Oct. 15, 2014, in the name of public service as part of the Insurance Society of Philadelphia (ISOP) and the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF)’s second annual Philadelphia Day of Giving. Volunteers worked with more than 20 organization including the Red Cross, Cradles to Crayons, Habitat for Humanity, Manna on Main, the Food Trust, Girls Scouts of New Jersey, the Ronald McDonald House and the Police Athletic League. ISOP teamed up with the Philadelphia Fire Department to install smoke detectors in one of the sections of the city. Over the past two years, ISOP has raised more than $100,000 to purchase the smoke detectors.
Wine & Wishes in Massachusetts
For the second year in a row, the Young Agents Committee of Massachusetts Association of Insurance Agents & Trusted Choice has sponsored Wine & Wishes, a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish MA & RI. Wine & Wishes, a wine and spirits tasting event, brings together young professionals from the Boston area to raise money and learn more about the Make-A-Wish mission. This year’s event brought together 180 people and raised $45,000 – enough to grant six wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses in the coming year.
Mary’s Kitchen, Veteran’s Administration
The Insurance Professionals of Orange County (IPOC) works all year to collect donations (money and goods) for Mary’s Kitchen in Orange and Long Beach VA Hospital. Members collect and donate toiletries, gently-used clothing, sleeping blankets, backpacks and other items. The IPOC collects items from insurance agencies and companies for a Dec. 15 delivery to both charities.
Arrowhead General Insurance Agency
San Diego-based Arrowhead General Insurance Agency Inc. and sister company American Claims Management Inc. teamed up in late 2013 to form a Charity Committee designed to get employees involved in community volunteering. Through the committee’s efforts, employees have cooked meals, cleaned up beaches, organized clothing drives and held bake sales, and taken trips around the globe to help rebuild devastated communities.
Haiti Orphan Project
Shortly after the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, founder and president of the Keane Insurance Group, John Keane, traveled to the areas hardest hit to see how he could help. What he found among the rubble was thousands of orphaned children. John created the Haiti Orphan Project (HOPE) as a way of helping these children. Since 2010, the HOPE foundation has built an orphanage, a school, a clean water well, and a medical clinic all on the same property, called “Village de Vie” (Village of Life). The project was funded by HOPE but was built by Haitians, giving them meaningful work and an income. Keane Insurance Group regularly makes trips to Haiti with employees and others. The firm’s next initiative is to develop industry that will provide Haitians training for job skills as well as income.
The Family Place: South & Western
Brighton, the South & Western Mascot, is seen here sitting proudly in front of employee-donated Christmas gifts for the Family Place, in Dallas in 2013. The Family Place provides victims of family with safe housing, counseling and skills that create independence while building community engagement and advocating for social change to stop family violence.
Fresh Water in Uganda
California-based Alonzo & Small Insurance Agency has been on two mission trips in recent years to Uganda, helping to dig wells for villages that previously had diseased water.