The state of Washington has started to see pockets of pricehardening for nonprofit insurance despite the down economy, saysBecky Holt, director of underwriting for insurance andrisk-management specialist Canfield Insurance Solutions of Ephrata,Wash.

“Pricing has been firming up a little bit. We were able toretain a flat renewal last year,” says Holt, whose company’s fiscalyear ends in June. “We’ve projected that it’s going up this year,but not a huge amount.”

Canfield works with some 26 classes of business within thesocial-services field, dealing mostly with what Washington Stateterms “true nonprofits”—food banks, chambers of commerce andmultiservice community-action agencies that include five or sixdifferent divisions, such as transportation or housing.

Canfield also is a third-party administrator for the Non ProfitInsurance Program (NPIP), a member-owned nonprofit insurancecooperative.

Several new social-service classes that have moved into thestate over the past year, such as environmental-risk groups thatspecialize in land and wildlife issues, are just starting to growenough to realize they need insurance, says Holt.