(SPONSORED) A little Good makes Big Change

The Hollard Insurance Group has launched Hollard ChangeMaker, a world-first that allows policyholders to effectively earn back a portion of their insurance premium through volunteering.

The offer is part of a broader call by South Africa’s largest independent insurer for citizens to take a more active role in contributing to the betterment of their communities and the country.

“South Africa has been through a lot in the last two years”, says Hollard Chief Marketing Officer Heidi Brauer. “The economic devastation resulting from COVID-19 and the looting and rioting that shook the country in June 2021 really got us thinking about how we could go beyond our core business and do more to fulfil our organisational purpose, which is to enable more people to create and secure a better future.

As an insurer, we were already fully engaged in assisting individuals and businesses to overcome the losses they had sustained. Over and above paying out record amounts of claims, we spent another R400-million in additional relief measures, including donations to the Solidarity Fund, discounts and waivers to policyholders, assistance with feeding programmes, loans, grants and cash advances to suppliers and various other measures. But we knew we had to find other ways of making a difference.

Our creative agency, VMLY&R, came up with two big ideas – the first one was to help small businesses, which really bore the brunt of both the pandemic and the riots. This became our Big Ads for Small Business campaign, which saw us share our advertising space with twelve small businesses in its initial phase. The twelve businesses involved in the initial campaign benefitted to such a great extent that we extended the campaign to three further businesses earlier this year.”

As Ryan McManus, Chief Creative Officer at VMLY&R, describes it “Our second idea was far more audacious. Recognising the fact that South Africa and the world was in a pretty dark place, we asked ourselves how we could create change at a big enough scale to make a real difference. How could we encourage ordinary citizens to become active change agents? And knowing Hollard’s purpose-driven approach to everything they do, we started thinking about creating a way for South Africans to earn back a portion of their insurance premiums through volunteering. We had this idea that if we could find a way to create thousands of small acts, those acts would generate big change. We wanted to create a way for South Africans to take an active role in improving the future, not only for themselves but for the most vulnerable in our society.”

Volunteering is not a new idea, and many South Africans already contribute some of their time to help those less fortunate than themselves. The wonderful work done by Imtiaaz Sooliman and Gift of the Givers demonstrates just how much of an impact private citizens can make. However, COVID and more recent events have exacerbated the need for ordinary citizens to lend a hand. The effects of ongoing corruption, rolling blackouts and the tragic floods in KwaZulu Natal have created a new wave of devastation and need.

Research reported on by the Stanford Center On Longevity reveals that one in four people do not volunteer because they have never been asked. Hollard ChangeMaker seeks to address that by encouraging all South Africans to volunteer their time. While a pilot group of Hollard policyholders stand to earn back up to 20% of their life insurance premiums through the programme for just one hour of volunteering work per month, Brauer describes the initiative as “a call to everyone who cares about making their community better”. “By partnering with with leading South African volunteering platform, forgood, we’ve made it easy for anyone who wishes to volunteer to find a charitable organisation aligned with their interests,

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