With a heightened profile and increasing demands being made on risk managers, the groundwork is being laid to make sure bright, adequately trained professionals will be entering the risk management profession by shoring up university programs and offering scholarships to students interested in the field.

In fact, 2007 was a banner year for donations to the Spencer Educational Foundation, which awards scholarships for risk management programs. Among other donations, the Risk and Insurance Management Society pledged $300,000, while commercial insurer FM Global donated $525,000–the largest contribution to date.

“Last year at this time, our focus was divided into trying to increase our endowment base with fundraising as a focus, and to grow some of our other programs,” said Donna L. Galer, chair of Spencer. “We accomplished both since then. And what's going to be new in 2008, in addition to keeping our focus on fundraising, are some interesting initiatives in the education arena.”

Because of the FM Global grant, there will be more emphasis on “loss prevention course development,” while the RIMS grant will include a piece going toward enterprise risk management education, Ms. Galer said.

She noted that in 2008 the foundation will award about $300,000, covering 40 scholarships. Since its inception, Spencer has given out 403 scholarships to students.

Steve Zenofsky, assistant vice president and manager of public relations with FM Global, said the company's reasoning for the contribution is that “we're seeing the world's risk becoming increasingly complex–in many of today's multinational organizations, especially. High-quality risk management is playing an increasingly important role in those organizations, and we felt there was an opportunity to help better prepare tomorrow's risk managers.”

He explained that because of its focus on property loss prevention and education–an important aspect of risk management–FM Global “truly understands the significance of education–especially because education is key to reducing property loss.”

Mr. Zenofsky explained that about half of FM Global's contribution will go to assisting universities with developing loss prevention-related courses. The grant will also go to unrestricted scholarships to students pursuing risk management and insurance degrees.

FM Global, he said, is working with Spencer to identify those schools in North America and Europe with leading risk management programs. “We're going to likely be bringing together some of the leaders of those programs to a summit, to work with them to figure out how to make the program happen,” he said.

He also noted that FM Global–which, he said, houses “the world's largest center for the study of ways to better protect business property”–will provide expense-paid trips to their research campus to scholarship recipients.

Mr. Zenofsky said the carrier's goal with its contribution is to help the next generation of risk managers understand the increasing value of loss prevention, as well as the role engineering can play in their organization's risk management efforts.

“The emphasis on engineering comes back to FM Global's focus–that we believe it's better to prevent a loss than to recover from one,” he said. “We also believe that the majority of all property damage is preventable, not inevitable.”

Ms. Galer said that while scholarships are “core and central to our mission,” other initiatives, such as the Risk Manager in Residence program, also are being emphasized. “A risk manager going on campus can talk to the entire undergrad business school,” she said. “We may contact 400 students at one of these visits.”

There will also be a number of Spencer fundraisers on Sunday, April 27, at the Risk and Insurance Management Society conference in San Diego, including tennis, golf and hockey tournaments.

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