Fast Focus
	Brokers compete like hell for business but work together for charities.
	Industry foundations raise money for cancer centers, charities that help children and more.

Silent Partners

Insurance brokers, carriers, pour millions into charitable works each year, yet few know of their generosity.

By  Louise Lague

Gerald Sullivan, president of the National Insurance Industry Council for the City of Hope, a California cancer center, had a carefully prepared speech for the council’s dinner in Chicago in November. But on a day when the stock market had crashed wildly, he added an extra, unexpected plea at the end.

“Our market has been soft for about three years,” he said. “But some other industries which also support City of Hope, such as real estate and construction, are in rougher shape than we are this year. Let’s try to pitch in a little more to make up the difference.”

The suggestion was met with thunderous applause, but it was strictly a sermon to the choir. Three hundred insurance executives from Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere had gathered to watch Stephen Lilienthal, then CNA Financial Corp. chairman and CEO, accept City of Hope’s Spirit of Life Award. Lilienthal headed last year’s fundraising campaign for the cancer research and treatment institution located just west of Pasadena, Calif.

“Insurance companies, and groups of insurance companies, do incredible things for charity all the time,” says Sullivan. “But nobody knows. We don’t talk about it quite enough.”

The City of Hope staff, though, is ready with praise. “These are good people, generous people,” says City of Hope president and CEO Michael Friedman, who flew in from California for the event. The National Insurance Industry Council (NIIC), which was formed as a group of property and casualty executives in the Los Angeles area in 1978, has raised more than $20 million since that time.

National Treasure

Support for the institution gradually went national. Sullivan, chairman of The Sullivan Group, a Los Angeles-based consortium of retail and wholesale brokers, demonstrated the cancer center’s national scope with a U.S. map that showed City of Hope patients from many other states, as well as partnerships with 40 other cancer research centers around the nation. “Cancer touches everybody,” says Sullivan. “You’re related to somebody, you know somebody, or you’ve heard of somebody, with cancer. Supporting City positively affects cancer research and treatment throughout the country.”

The 95-year old research facility and treatment center runs more than 300 clinical trials at any given time, with 30% to 40% of its patients participating. It is California’s leading hospital in hematology and prostate cancer, and its research has led to the development of at least four cancer drugs and many other treatment procedures.

Dr. Bob Figlin, City of Hope’s associate director for clinical research, reminded the group, “We lose 1,500 Americans a day to cancer.” Cures and treatments are urgently needed, he said, because “75% of cancer patients are over 55,” and as the baby boomer generation ages, cancer is expected to strike greater numbers. He hastened to add that there are also 12 million survivors of cancer in this country.

Lilienthal, the honoree, also serves on the board of The Boys and Girls Club of Chicago. The son of a New York deli owner and a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., Lilienthal expressed dismay that he would not be able to laud the Red Sox or the New England Patriots, but he did have serious words of praise for the City of Hope and his fellow donors.

“Our industry has an outstanding tradition of support for City of Hope and its efforts to quickly move the latest scientific discoveries into treatments that will benefit patients around the world,” he said.