Heart to Heart

Heart to Heart

How giving helps agents and companies build stronger connections to their neighbors

By Susan Rupe and Cassie Miller

Matt and Yi were in a good place. They had recently transitioned to a more stable financial situation and had begun to accumulate some wealth. They had even purchased their first home together. And then they received devastating news. In December 2018, 41-year-old Matt was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. It was something the couple never saw coming. “At the time, we were like, ‘OK, finally we can start to enjoy our life and plan for the future,’” Yi said. After the cancer diagnosis, she said, everything became more difficult.

Yi began to worry about the couple’s finances and how to navigate them, knowing that she would likely need to take time off work to care for Matt while also figuring out how to afford his treatments. Yi and Matt (who did not want their last names used) both knew that cancer could be financially devastating for them.

The couple’s worries about the financial impact of Matt’s diagnosis were justified. One in three families reports depleting their savings as a result of a cancer diagnosis. Twenty-four percent of families said they had to borrow against their retirement funds as a family member was treated for cancer, according to the Foundation for Financial Planning. In addition, some cancer patients even see poorer health outcomes as a result of their financial stress.

Seeking resources that would help them, Yi found the Financial Planning for Cancer program, a collaborative effort between the Foundation for Financial Planning and the nonprofit organization Family Reach. Not long after finding the program, Yi and Matt were soon connected with Craig Cohn, a financial planner in San Diego.

Cohn knew that Matt’s diagnosis would change the couple’s financial picture. Cohn worked to realign the couple’s investments to free up funds for shortterm use. He also adjusted their 401(k) investments, while avoiding penalties, to bring down the risk factor and ultimately make adjustments for what was going on in their life.

“I just really wanted to take some of the pressure off them immediately,” Cohn said. “How do we handle things in the short term so, when we get to the long term, it will be fine?”

Cohn discussed expenses and income. He also conducted an insurance review and created a budget for the couple.

Through his financial advice, Cohn was able to relieve the couple’s financial stress, allowing them to focus on Matt’s treatment. “It was incredibly helpful and really provided a peace of mind for our family going forward,” Yi said. “From the very beginning, I felt very safe, and I felt there was a trust there. I’m very grateful to be connected to Financial Planning for Cancer, and ultimately, to Craig. When we make it through this difficult time, we’ll have plenty of time to invest for the future.”

Cohn’s work and the program were able to provide some peace of mind for Matt as he went through his cancer treatments. Matt said, “For me, it’s a huge peace of mind because my big concern is that Yi is taken care of if I’m not here.”

Cohn urges other advisors to get involved in similar pro bono initiatives. “You have a skill set that can be used by people in the worst of times,” he said.

Of his work with Yi and Matt, Cohn said, “Working with a family going through cancer or another difficult situation is always challenging, but always very rewarding. It’s when clients need us the most.”

GIVING: IT’S A BALANCE

Cohn’s work with Matt and Yi is only one example of the many ways people in the financial services industry give back to others. Sometimes that giving takes the form of one-on-one help, and sometimes giving is in the form of a multimillion-dollar corporate contribution.

All individual giving is actually a balance, according to Jenna Mulhall- Brereton, chief philanthropic services officer of the National Philanthropic Trust.

Jenna Mulhall-Brereton

“I think you make decisions about giving with your head and with your heart,” she said. “Because every individual is different, every giving experience is different. People are going to weigh different factors differently in deciding whether to give.”

One of the major motivators in giving, Mulhall-Brereton said, is having a cause that people feel personally connected to. “If a family member has battled a disease, it might feel meaningful to give to an organization that invests in research for that disease or helps others who are living with it. It’s something that feels tangible and important.”

A still from Nationwide's Denial, Ohio, campaign.

The concept of “paying it forward” also can motivate the giver, she said.

“For example, someone might feel grateful for the experiences that opened up to them because of the school they attended.

They might feel grateful to a hospital for the treatment that they or a family member received. So it can be motivating to think that giving a gift to an organization that has benefited you can allow others to have that same experience.”

Another motivating factor in giving is when someone can actually see a need for help, she said. “When we see something tragic on the news, such as forest fires in California, when you see that level of tragedy, it can kind of restore hope for people to feel like there’s something that they can do. This is why we see a lot of giving for disaster response, for example, because people see the devastation on the news, and they’re motivated to do something to help alleviate that suffering.”

Knowing that someone in your own backyard is going through a difficult time also is a motivation to give. “This is giving where we see the need and sense the emotional suffering someone is going through, and where you can see the joy that you can engender by helping,” she said.

When it comes to corporate giving, Mulhall-Brereton said, donors look at two factors: where their dollars can do the most good, and how their giving can create change.

“They want to know that their giving is going to make a difference,” she said of corporate philanthropy. “People look for organizations that have a track record of success and can show they’re making an impact. It’s not only about choosing causes, it’s also about choosing to give to organizations that can move the needle on those causes.”

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

In Nationwide’s case, the company hoped to move the needle on one of the critical problems facing America today. But it took an unusual route to address the opioid crisis, right through a fictional village.

Denial, Ohio, looks like the town where most of us dream of living. It’s the kind of place where children ride their bicycles along tree-lined streets. Parents cheer on the sidelines at sporting events, and neighbors gather for backyard barbecues.

But because nobody in Denial believes that their children experiment with prescription opioids, “My child would never do that” is practically the town motto. And so everyone continues to live in blissful ignorance.

Nationwide joined forces with a nonprofit group and a number of other partners to get people to stop living in Denial.

Nationwide provided $4 million through its foundation to the 85-member Ohio Opioid Education Alliance. The carrier best known for its “Nationwide is on your side” jingle had its ad agency create a TV public service announcement depicting the fictional town of Denial. The campaign is aimed at encouraging parents to talk to their children about the dangers of prescription opioids and at getting people to dispose of their unused prescription painkillers responsibly.

The video campaign first appeared on TV in 2018. The TV spots have been broadcast on stations throughout Ohio, the state where Nationwide has its corporate headquarters, and the videos have been shown during major sporting events in the state. The video also is part of a paid social media campaign.

Opioid addiction has hit the state of Ohio hard, and even Nationwide’s employees haven’t been immune from the scourge, said Chad Jester, Nationwide Foundation president.

“About eight years ago, we started seeing some changes in our employee benefit spending,” Jester said. “Our colleague who runs that area delved into it and found some of it was tied to opioid addiction, that employees and their dependents were getting treatment.”

The company responded by bringing in speakers to talk to employees about the issues surrounding opioid abuse and addiction, Jester said. The sessions were simulcast to Nationwide’s employees around the U.S. In addition, employees whose families were affected by opioid abuse conducted panel discussions to share their experiences. Jester said the opioid crisis even affected his own family.

Eventually, Nationwide Foundation officials approached the Ohio Opioid Education Alliance and volunteered to create a public service announcement campaign. The campaign goes beyond raising awareness of the opioid crisis, Jester said, because people already are aware of the damage opioids are doing to their communities. Instead, the campaign urges people to take action.

Along with the video campaign, Nationwide officials distributed prescription drug disposal bags throughout Ohio.

Audience research showed the video campaign is reaching consumers, said Jimmy Lump, spokesperson for the alliance. Statewide polling revealed that 57% of those who saw the TV spots said they are talking to their children as a result of seeing the videos, and 54% said the TV spots made them more cautious about how they dispose of their unused prescriptions.

HELPING A CLIENT HEAL

Seeing someone in pain can be a powerful motivator to give, said Mulhall-Brereton of the National Philanthropic Trust. Agents assist clients when they experience the worst times of their lives, and that can be the inspiration for giving.

Christmas morning 2017 should have been a happy time as Miles McLane and his family spent their first holiday season on their newly acquired farm outside Berger, Mo. But they woke up to terror as a fire destroyed their barn and a number of their livestock. McLane tried to rescue as many animals as he could, but some of them followed their instincts and ran back into the flaming barn.

Exactly one year later, the scene of that devastating fire became a scene of surprise and joy, thanks to an agent who was touched by the McLane family’s tragedy.

Meaghan Dowd is an agent with Powers Insurance and Risk Management, a multiline agency in St. Louis. She helped the McLane family file the insurance claim to rebuild their barn. But she wanted to do something more.

McLane is an Army veteran who served in the Middle East. Buying his farm and moving his family to the country was his longtime dream. Even though he was able to build a new barn on his property and acquire some additional livestock to replace what was lost in the fire, something was missing.

Dowd wanted to give McLane something to help him heal from his loss and trauma. She worked with McLane’s wife, Katrina, to make it happen.

On Christmas morning 2018, the anniversary of the fire, Dowd showed up at the McLane farm decked out in a Christmas elf costume and leading Rebel, a rescue horse, to his new home. Dowd and Katrina spent nearly a year finding a suitable horse for McLane before locating 15-year-old Rebel. Dowd also provided a saddle and all the other riding gear.

Army veteran Miles McLane receiving a surprise horse a year after a tragic fire that killed some of his livestock.

McLane’s disbelief in his equine gift quickly turned to joy as he told Dowd how he had wanted his own horse since he was a boy.

After 10 years in the insurance world, Dowd said she had handled many types of claims. But something about the McLane fire affected her and her coworkers, inspiring them to do something to help.

“We knew this was his first Christmas at the farm and his first Christmas as a civilian after serving in the military,” she said. “We were trying to figure out what we could do to give back to him. At first, we were thinking we could donate a goat or a pig to replace some of the livestock he lost. But then his wife told us he always wanted a horse. So we made that our mission; we were going to deliver something on Christmas morning that could hopefully change his family’s memory of that morning and make it a very special memorable one.”

Dowd said she hoped the horse would provide another gift to McLane and his family — the gift of hope. “We wanted them to know there are people out there who care about them and want to take care of them when they need it. They have a whole community behind them.”

A NEW DIMENSION

Giving also can be a learning experience, Mulhall-Brereton said, especially when the giving involves more than simply writing a check. Insurance companies use their foundations as a means to give to causes they want to support, but when the individual employees get involved, giving takes on an entirely new dimension.

Ken Weliczka was standing at his grocery store’s deli counter when he realized the challenge so many of his fellow citizens face.

Weliczka is responsible for corporate bond investments at National Life Group, based in Montpelier, Vt. When his company invited its employees to take the 3Squares Challenge, Weliczka stepped up.

The 3Squares Challenge is part of National Life’s efforts to help eradicate childhood hunger in Vermont. Participants are asked to spend a week eating only food purchased with the amount of money that 3Squares, Vermont’s food-assistance program, provides to its low-income recipients.

For Weliczka, that meant he had $5.22 per day to buy food for himself. So the first step in the challenge was to plan what he could afford to eat and where he could buy it.

“In a rural state like Vermont, that could be a problem,” Weliczka said. “But I live in a town with a Walmart and two big grocery stores within a half-mile of each other. So it was a matter of looking at the ads for the week and seeing what was on sale, and then bargain shopping and seeing where I could save 10 cents here or 25 cents there. All that adds up when you have less than $37 to buy food for the week, so I had to spend a lot of time planning what I could potentially afford and then putting the plan into action.”

So what did he eat that week? He soon found out that a 3Squares budget didn’t leave room for variety.

Weliczka

“It was oatmeal for breakfast every day,” he said. “It was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch or dinner most days. I was able to buy some turkey and cheese, so there was a little bit of protein that I had to stretch over the week. I bought a container of pasta and a container of sauce that I was able to stretch for dinner over three nights. And then I bought apples, bananas and some cups of yogurt.

It was when Weliczka bought the turkey at the deli counter that he faced the reality of having so little money to buy food. He had budgeted enough for exactly a halfpound of the sandwich meat — and not a slice more. When the deli clerk sliced the turkey, it weighed in at about three-quarters of a pound. Weliczka asked her to remove the excess turkey but it still weighed 0.57 pound, so he asked her to remove one additional slice to get to the magic half-pound mark. The clerk seemed exasperated over the request and the customers in line behind him were becoming impatient. At that point, Weliczka said he realized what it must be like for 3Square recipients to deal with an unexpected expense in the grocery store checkout or having to watch classmates or friends eat lunch.

Although Weliczka took on the challenge for only himself and not for the rest of his family, he acknowledged that eating on a 3Squares budget would be a huge challenge for his wife and children.

“One of the things that really hit home for me is that one of my daughters has severe food allergies,” Weliczka said. “We buy her a lot of organic products and a lot of products that are free from nuts, dairy and gluten. Those things often cost up to five times more than the store-brand products I was buying as part of the challenge.”

He could see how balancing a meager food budget could risk a child’s life.

Although Weliczka’s family already had been regular donors to their church’s food bank, he said his experience with the 3Squares Challenge inspired them to be more thoughtful about the types of food they donate, making sure they give the kind of food that recipients want and need.

Beth Rusnock is president of the National Life Group Foundation. She said the issue of childhood hunger hits close to home for some of the insurers’ employees, who shared videos with their fellow workers about their own experiences with food insecurity while they were growing up.

National Life adopted the cause of eliminating childhood hunger in late 2018, commissioning research on the issue from the Urban Institute. The findings of that research became a springboard to help develop strategies and tactics to end childhood hunger in Vermont. Rusnock said researchers estimate the number of food-insecure children in Vermont ranges anywhere from 19,000 to 35,000.

The National Life Group Foundation has teamed with several statewide organizations aimed at ending childhood hunger, Rusnock said. In addition, the company created an Employee Action Team, which is working in a grassroots

manner to tackle the issue. The company also formed a Childhood Hunger Steering Committee that includes thought leaders from throughout Vermont who can help pull together the resources needed to make a difference.

One thing that the foundation plans to do in the future is to establish a network of structures similar to “little libraries” where people donate books for others to take. These structures will be placed throughout Montpelier but instead of books, they will contain food and other necessities that those in need can take.

Eliminating hunger fits in with National Life’s mission of protecting families, Rusnock said.

“We recognize that if families are struggling financially, often the first thing to go when they look at paying for rent and heat and transportation and child care is food. The ripple effect of that is much greater than many of us realize. Often parents will go without so their children can eat. But when children don’t have access to food, when they go to school, they’re hungry and they can’t concentrate and they can’t learn.

“There are lifelong effects of childhood hunger, emotionally and physically. If we’re looking to shore up our future, this is where it starts.”

TWO HOURS CAN BE LIFESAVING

You don’t have to invest a lot of time to be an effective giver, Mulhall-Brereton said. Something that takes only a couple of hours can have a lifesaving effect.

Craig Lytle and Bloodhound the dog.

Craig Lytle was new to the insurance business in 1998 when one of the senior agents in his office encouraged him to give blood. Clint Laird was chairman of the board at what was then known as the Blood Bank of Delaware, and he encouraged everyone in the Equitable Life office to be a blood donor.

Lytle made several donation visits to the blood bank, but on one of those visits, he noticed a group of people off to one side, watching movies. When he asked what they were doing, he was told they were donating platelets. Platelet donation is a bit more involved than a whole-blood donation, with the process taking up to two hours.

After he learned that platelets are in demand to treat cancer patients, burn victims and organ transplant recipients and that platelets have a shelf life of only about five days, Lytle decided to become a regular platelet donor.

Today, Lytle is president of Income & Estate Planning Partners in Newark, Del., and has donated platelets 75 times. A donor can give platelets up to 24 times a year, and it takes about two or three days for the donor’s body to recover after giving platelets, Lytle said.

Lytle said the platelet donation benefits him as well as the recipients.

“For me, it’s a time to be very introspective. I literally shut the phone off for a couple of hours and disconnect from electronics,” he said. “I realize that whoever receives the platelets won’t know who donated them. And, on the reverse side, I will never know who receives the donated platelets. To me, that has some sort of value — I refer to it as psychic income. It’s appealing to me knowing that someone who is going through a rough time with cancer treatment or someone who had an organ transplant will have a better chance of making it because I’m fortunate enough to be healthy and able to donate.”

Lytle doesn’t know exactly who receives his platelets. But he knows people who have benefited from platelet donation, and he said that inspires him to continue donating.

“One of my best friends from high school is a leukemia survivor,” Lytle said. “By the time he became ill, I already had been donating platelets for some time. I was visiting him in the hospital when I heard someone at the nurse’s station on the phone with the blood bank, placing an order for platelets. And that was my first experience overhearing the process from the other side of the transaction.”

Lytle said his friend received platelets as part of his treatment. The friend’s brother also received platelets while he was fighting a fatal battle with lymphoma. Lytle’s mother is a lymphoma survivor, and she too received platelets while she was being treated for the disease.

In addition to donating platelets, Lytle is supporting the Blood Bank of Delmarva through sales of his book, The Sandwich Generation: Stuck In The Middle?

“It’s fulfilling and empowering,” he said, “to do something that just might help someone else in a meaningful way.”

How to start a giving campaign

* Decide what cause is meaningful to you (and your employees, if applicable).

* Engage with staff or volunteers of the nonprofit in advance to determine their needs.

* Maintain a personal connection throughout the campaign.