feature article - july 2008

Northwestern Mutual quietly helping communities

FOR MORE than 150 years, Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual has nurtured a culture of doing the right thing. It’s a practice that harkens back to the company’s earliest days more than a century ago.

In 1859, a train accident resulted in death claims totaling $3,500. The then-fledgling company had only $2,000 on hand to cover claims. Samuel Daggett, Northwestern Mutual’s president, personally borrowed the funds needed to ensure that claims were paid to the policyowners’ families.

Northwestern Mutual financial representatives returning to Milwaukee this month for their 128th annual meeting are schooled in this tradition. It’s one of the reasons Northwestern Mutual has been named “America’s Most Admired” life insurance company in FORTUNE® magazine for 25 years.

Over the last century and a half, Northwestern Mutual’s business commitment to doing the right thing has endured — extending itself to the role of Northwestern Mutual as corporate citizen. The company believes that a good citizen helps others grow and prosper. Sometimes such help comes in the form of time and effort. Often it takes the form of financial support.

Financial support

Northwestern Mutual gives more money to develop the health of communities than any other corporation in Wisconsin.

In fiscal year 2008, the Northwestern Mutual Foundation granted nearly $18 million in gifts to the communities it serves and to national initiatives. Its corporate giving focuses on three areas: education, health & human services and the arts & culture.

Volunteerism extends the reach

Last year, employees spent about 30,000 hours working as volunteers — everything from coat drives and community gardens to rehabilitating houses.

On a national level, too, members of the company’s field force are encouraged to involve themselves in their communities. Each year, 25 people who volunteer to help local nonprofit organizations receive Community Service Awards. The awards, totaling nearly $265,000 annually, support the organizations for which these members of the field force work. Since 1995, more than $2.2 million in awards has been given to 200 nonprofit organizations.

New campaign engages others

A new 2008 giving initiative is part of the company’s Let Your Worries Go campaign.

This interactive Web site features common financial worries, like achieving financial security or funding an education. Visitors to the site can choose fun ways to jettison their particular worries: via submarine, hot-air balloon, catapult and rocket. The underlying message? Northwestern Mutual helps more than 3.2 million people let their financial worries go.

The giving component of the site features four societal worries: hunger, illness, personal fitness and natural disasters. Visitors are asked to “vote” for the worry they would most like the Northwestern Mutual Foundation to help.

On December 31, 2008, the votes will be tabulated to determine how the company’s foundation will divide a $1 million grant among four national organizations that combat these issues: America's Second Harvest, Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, the YMCA, and Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. Each organization is guaranteed to receive at least $100,000.

Northwestern Mutual believes that sharing hours, talents and gifts is the way members of the community care for each other. The company invites you to go to the Web address to vote — to take a few moments to help others “let their worries go.” www.letyourworriesgo.com