From a Whisper To a Shout

• Bonnie Brewer Cavanaugh
• December 2005
• 

In the children's book Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss, the residents of the tiny town of Whoville band together to let the world know they exist with a rousing shout of, "We are here, we are here, we are here!"

Much like the Whos in Whoville, not-for-profit fraternal beneficiary societies, which run some 130 fraternal life insurance groups nationwide, are reaching out to let federal lawmakers know that they, too, exist -- and that their century-old history of good works deems them worthy of retaining their tax-exempt status.

The societies and their trade association, the National Fraternal Congress of America in Oak Brook, Ill., are working to attain a higher profile to offset recommendations made in late January by the Joint Committee on Taxation of the House and Senate, to rescind the tax exemption status for such fraternal benefit organizations.

Fraternal life insurers fear that taxation could put an end to their community-minded way of life, so they're off on a never-before-seen marketing venture to increase the awareness of the fraternal life niche and its charitable contributions to small-town America. It's not just to prove their worth to Congress, but also to bring an influx of new membership into the shrinking societies.

Lawmakers hope to raise some $500 million in taxes from fraternal benefit groups over the next 10 years by repealing their tax-exempt status. It's not the first time they've tapped such fraternals to increase the federal tax rolls.

"The last time this issue partly came up was in the mid-1980s, when legislators proposed taking away the tax exemption from just the largest fraternals, not all of them," said Fred Grubbe, president and chief executive officer of the 119-year-old NFCA, which represents 75 fraternal beneficiary societies in the United States and Canada.

What's interesting, Grubbe said, is that the suggested tax change is not coming from senators or representatives, but from their committee staff members.

"Unfortunately our friends in the Congress -- our staff friends, who support the members of Congress -- don't understand the social safety net that we have provided and continue to provide because government simply can't do everything," Grubbe said.

To date, NFCA member groups have raised more than $16 million toward Gulf Coast disaster relief, in addition to providing "man hours in the thousands." NFCA societies also contributed about $11 million to Sept. 11, 2001, relief, and some $5 million in relief to the victims of the 2004 Florida hurricanes.

"Fraternal benefit societies each year raise some $400 million for charitable fraternal activities around the country," noted Evan Migdail, a partner at DLA Piper Rudnick in Washington, D.C. The NFCA hired Migdail earlier this year to lobby on their behalf. "They also expend some 93 million volunteer hours [per year], which is a very big part of their business," he said.

A standard in charitable organizations known as the "independent sector formula" is used to determine the dollar value of volunteer time, Migdail said; 93 million hours comes out to more than $1.5 billion in volunteer hours.

"You would raise $500 million [by repealing their tax-exempt status], but you probably would destroy a system that's been around 100 years and that over the same 10 years is going to raise upward of $4 billion toward charity," Migdail added. And that doesn't even include the value of volunteer hours.

"Only in Washington do they have that kind of math," Grubbe noted. Without the tax exemption, the largest fraternal groups in the NFCA would likely turn commercial, while the remaining smaller societies, about 68 of them, would probably just shut down.

"You take away the tax exemption, and fraternals are going to close their doors," Grubbe added. "We don't make money; that's not what we do."

Stripping fraternal life insurers of their tax-exempt status would be crippling -- not only to the niche industry, but to the small towns it serves nationwide, noted Kenny Massey, president and chief executive officer of Modern Woodmen of America, Rock Island, Ill. A.M. Best Co. ranked Modern Woodmen as the third-largest of the 44 fraternal life societies it tracks, based on 2004 year-end total admitted assets of $6.9 billion.

"I hope that everyone really steps back for a minute and realizes what everyone would pay in taxes," Massey noted. "It would be a catastrophe in so many small communities that have come to rely on us."

Modern Woodmen's pet projects include upgrading fire department equipment in small towns, which not only increases safety and security, but in turn, reduces homeowners insurance for the entire community.

Losing tax-free status would have an "enormous impact" on the Knights of Columbus, said Patrick Korten, vice president of communications for the New Haven, Conn.-based group. "The thing that enables us to operate an organization like that effectively, from the international level to the local council level, is the revenues we are able to derive from the insurance side of the operation," Korten said.

The Knights of Columbus has more than 12,000 local councils across the country and some 1.7 million members worldwide, with 1.2 million in the United States alone. They are the second-largest fraternal, with 2004 year-end total admitted assets of $11.7 billion.

End of a System

Korten spent a week in October on Capitol Hill, having "highly selective discussions" on fraternal benefit societies and their place in the American economy. "Republican members, when we talk to them, we like to remind them that the Republican platform has included a blanket favoring retention for fraternals for decades now," Korten said.

Grubbe said the late October meetings on Capitol Hill were reassuring. "We have every reason to believe that the Congress will not rescind the 501(c)(8) status granted to fraternal benefit societies," he said. Yet, in the "unlikely case" that the exemption is repealed in the future, "It would mark the end of the fraternal benefit system as we know it today."

Prior to 1984 when the tax rules were reformed, commercial insurance companies were not subject to federal income tax on a substantial part of their income. In 1986, Congress eliminated the tax exemption for Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations saying they were providing commercial-type insurance. Congress then asked the Treasury Department to study the tax issues related to fraternal societies, Migdail said.

"The study, which took some eight years, was released in 1993, and was favorable to fraternal [benefit] societies," said Migdail, who lobbied for NFCA the last time around. "And this issue stayed out of the public eye for another 12 years."

At least one elected official has been sympathetic to NFCA's cause. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., told the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 13 that within 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina, "the nation's fraternal benefit societies were feeding, housing, and providing supplies, clothes, toiletries, cash and beds to those in need in shelters both in Houston and New Orleans."

Yet fraternals received little, if any, recognition of this major undertaking.

"We think fraternals have a tendency to be very modest about what they do, even though they do great things," Migdail said. "Sometimes that hurts because Washington doesn't hear from you for a long time; they don't know what the organizations are up to."

"They need to be a little vocal," he added.

"We've done a very bad job of promoting ourselves. In a media age, we're ‘out of sight, out of mind,'" Grubbe said. "We're the best kept secret in America."

History of Silence

It's a touchy situation for the usually quiet societies; fraternal benefit groups traditionally don't talk about the good deeds they do.

"The reason the popular media doesn't know about us is that the motto of the fraternal beneficiary societies has always been, ‘Let our good deeds speak for themselves.' They're very modest people," Grubbe explained. "NFCA Immediate Past Chair Michael Stivoric liked to say that we ‘hide our light under a bushel basket.'"

Fraternal benefit societies were formed in this country more than 100 years ago, when "modesty was a virtue," he added.

In the early 20th century, more than 50% of all life insurance in the United States was sold through fraternal benefit societies; today, fraternals account for 1.5% of all the life insurance in force nationwide, Grubbe said. The heyday of the societies was during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, when approximately 200 to 250 such groups existed across the country. Today there are some 120 to 130 fraternal beneficiary societies nationwide.

In 1894, fraternal beneficiary societies, such as Modern Woodmen of America, were granted a tax exemption by Congress via IRS Code 501, giving them 501(c)(8) status; in turn, such fraternal societies as the Kiwanis Club and Jaycees were granted 501(c)(10) status. The difference is that while both fraternal groups are based on a lodge system, are service-oriented, and provide a social function, fraternal benefit groups additionally provide financial benefits through life insurance, health insurance, or accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Fraternal societies, like Kiwanis, do not.

The revenue raised from the sale of such insurance gets poured back into the fraternal operational side and supports the lodge system, of which there are some 36,000 groups nationwide, serving 10 million individual fraternalists in the United States today.

According to NFCA, 80% of fraternal benefit society members are policyholders of life, health or annuities plans. The other 20% are "purely social members" who pay nominal membership dues of about $25 or $35.

NFCA's plans for getting fraternals "out from under a bushel basket" and into the public eye include a public awareness campaign, which Grubbe noted "the general public will start seeing over the course of the next few months."

Marketing efforts include:

-- Monthly Congressional visits (except for the August recess) with designated taxation staff members;

-- Taking "a more proactive role" in issuing press releases to the media;

-- Developing and refining the association's Web site (www.nfcanet.org);

-- Developing programs allowing individual members to communicate with their local media and the general public;

-- Continued support and advertising of the group's six-year-old project, Join Hands Day: a youth-and-adult partnership day set aside to solve local community problems.

It's not too late for fraternal beneficiary societies to adapt and change; many are already moving in that direction, Grubbe said.

"We're a mature industry, we know that. But we also think there is definitely a place in American culture for modern fraternalism," Grubbe said. That includes the use of advancing technology -- such as online meetings and conference calls -- to better accommodate members' schedules.

Courting New Members

NFCA also is exploring the creation of new organizations nationwide as it looks ahead to its plans to grow the system. Grubbe said the NFCA would work with the groups to help them set up capital funding.

"In the next 10 to 15 years the mortality tables tell us that we will show a dramatic drop-off in fraternal beneficiary society members," Grubbe said. There has been just one new fraternal beneficiary society created in recent times, but the membership was disappointing.

"If the interest is out there, we have to make it easier for groups that are already organized: African American, Latino and Asian American groups," Grubbe said. "We need to do a better job educating them about fraternal beneficiary societies, and what that could do for their membership that already exists through their own original structure."

Woodmen of the World/Omaha Woodmen Life Insurance Society, which has partnered with the American Red Cross on disaster relief efforts for eight years, raised about $542,000 in Hurricane Katrina relief funds to date, also serving 449,000 meals to survivors, spokesperson Scott Darling noted. In-kind donations, including diapers, water and even chainsaws, amounted to $533,000 by late October. Volunteer hours are at 192,000 and rising.

Woodmen of the World has some 2,000 lodges and 800,000 members nationwide, holding some $33.5 billion in insurance policies in force. They are ranked the fourth-largest fraternal life society in a 2004 A.M. Best Co. survey of year-end total admitted assets, with $6.87 billion. Yet, a repeal of the tax exemption could flatten the institution.

"From the fraternal standpoint, it would drastically affect us," said Woodmen of the World Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Mounce. "It would curtail our ability to provide services back to the community … and even possibly some of the things that we provide for our members as far as fraternal benefits go."

"Government cannot do it all; it takes the efforts of individuals and the efforts of organizations such as the fraternals to do so much of this," Mounce added. "If we were taxed, it would greatly hamper our ability to continue to do what we do so well."

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the largest fraternal life society overall -- A.M. Best rated it first based on 2004 year-end total admitted assets of $49.3 billion -- has 2.8 million members and some 1,400 local chapters, representing $156.6 billion in life insurance in force.

Through its alliance, Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity, the group produced a $105 million commitment over four years to build more affordable housing nationwide. Thrivent also raised $6 million for hurricane disaster relief in autumn, and pledged another $5 million through Habitat for Humanity to address long-term housing needs in the Gulf Coast. In 2004, Thrivent Financial donated more than $10 million in relief to aid tsunami survivors.

Fraternal benefit society members don't get rich from such deeds; but what they do get is much more valuable, Grubbe said.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the stories related by members returning home from weeks in the devastated Gulf Coast region, where numerous fraternal lodges were affected. One lodge member, a nurse by trade, described very matter-of-factly how she had to kill a poisonous snake while helping a Louisiana family evacuate from the knee-deep waters of their flooded home.

"The purpose of the story was to make light of it -- we are going to do whatever is necessary to help these folks get back on their feet, because you can't imagine the devastation," Grubbe said. "If it comes down to killing a snake -- there but for the grace of God go I."

Learn More

Modern Woodmen of America

A.M. Best Company # 06737

Distribution: Licensed producers

Knights of Columbus

A.M. Best Company # 06616

Distribution: Captive agents

Woodmen of the World/Omaha Woodmen Life Insurance Society

A.M. Best Company # 07259

Distribution: Captive agents

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

A.M. Best Company # 06008

Distribution: Financial representatives and career agents

For ratings and other financial strength information about these companies, visit www.ambest.com.

By Bonnie Brewer Cavanaugh, senior associate editor, Best's Review: Bonnie.Cavanaugh@ambest.com