Pamela Ellen Davis

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Pamela Davis
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Pamela Ellen Davis

TitleFounder, President and CEO of Nonprofits Insurance Alliance
Website insurancefornonprofits.org

Pamela Ellen Davis is the founder, President and CEO of Nonprofits Insurance Alliance (NIA), a group of 501(c)(3) nonprofit insurance cooperatives that provide liability insurance to more than 26,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States. [1] [2] In addition to her nonprofit insurance work, she is a public policy advocate and nonprofit thought leader who has spearheaded legislative change at both the California state and Federal level and overseen projects to increase nonprofits' access to credit and improve the financial expertise of the nonprofit sector.

Contents

Personal life

Davis was born in Mansfield, Ohio and attended Ohio University for a year and a half, before marrying and moving to Oxford, Ohio and then to Harlan County, KY to work for an environmental education school. After three years in Kentucky, she returned to Ohio where she became involved in the natural food movement and opened a health food store and restaurant. At the age of 30, she divorced, sold her restaurant and moved to California, where she went on to earn a bachelor's degree in economics from UC Santa Cruz and a master's degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley. [3] [4]

Leadership in Nonprofit Insurance

Master's Thesis on the Nonprofit Insurance Crisis

In 1987, Davis was a master's degree candidate in Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley. Her master's thesis, supported by the California Community Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, documented the effect of the mid-1980s liability insurance crisis on nonprofit organization's ability to obtain liability insurance. Nonprofits were seeing their premiums rise drastically, and many organizations couldn't obtain coverage from any insurer, leading them to go out of business. [5] In 1987, she testified before the California General Assembly that:

Between 1984 and 1986, general liability insurance premiums increased 200 percent or more for one out of four charitable nonprofit organizations in California. During that same period, insurance companies canceled or refused to renew the general liability policies of one out of five California charitable nonprofits. Some important human service programs, such as childcare, foster care, group homes and health service were forced to dramatically cut services or close because they couldn’t find affordable insurance. [6]

Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC)

Based on her master's thesis research, Davis was convinced that conventional insurers did not fully understand insurance risk in the nonprofit sector, so she set out to create a nonprofit risk pool that could better meet the needs of nonprofits in California. [7] In 1989, Davis secured $1.3 million in loans from nonprofit partners and foundations to create Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC). [8]

Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance (ANI)

Over the next decade, NIAC grew to serve thousands of nonprofits, but its operations were limited to the state of California. In order to replicate the NIAC model nationwide, Davis secured $5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and $5 million from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation to found Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance, Risk Retention Group (ANI). [9] [10]

NIAC and ANI are the primary insurers forming Nonprofits Insurance Alliance. NIA insures over 26,000 nonprofits in 32 states and the District of Columbia, and controls over $736.9 million in assets. [1] [11]

Legislative Initiatives

Throughout her career, Pamela Davis has spearheaded multiple efforts to pass legislation strengthening nonprofit self-insurance pools and expanding the services they are allowed to provide:

Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector

American Nonprofits

In 2012, Davis and a group of nonprofit leaders formed American Nonprofits, a nonprofit organization with a two-fold mission. The first is to create a platform for research, dialog, and debate among nonprofit finance professionals and thought leaders on topics related to finance, accountability, capital, and strategy. Davis saw that there were institutions in the nonprofit sector that provided information and support to nonprofits about fundraising, grantmaking, and public policy efforts, but none provided resources relevant to the day-to-day financial operations of most nonprofits.

The second goal of the organization is to create a democratically governed financial institution (a federal credit union) owned by the nonprofit sector to which nonprofits, foundations and individuals can move their deposits, and see their deposits and fees used to support the nonprofit sector. In 2013, Davis and the American Nonprofits board explored the viability of creating a national credit union; [20] they received preliminary field of membership approval from the National Credit Union Administration to serve 501(c)(3) nonprofits, their employees, volunteers and stakeholders, and they created a start-up and 4-year business plan. At the beginning of 2014, Davis announced that, while many parties were interested in the credit union project, American Nonprofits was not able to raise $10.5 million in starting capital at that time, so the credit union was temporarily put on hold. [21] American Nonprofits now exists an active loan fund for small 501(c)(3) nonprofits. [22]

NIAC Member Loan Fund

Through feedback from nonprofit customers, Davis became aware that many nonprofits struggled to obtain credit from traditional lenders. Many lenders required personal guarantees or collateral, and many did not offer nonprofits small working capital loans. In order to better understand nonprofits' credit needs and the feasibility of offering small working capital loans, Davis asked her Board of Directors to create the NIAC Member Loan Fund, a pilot program that made 1-year working capital loans of up to $75,000 to NIAC insurance customers. [23] [24] These loans had no personal guarantee or collateral requirements and take less than a month for review and approval. NIAC used data from the loan fund to develop risk models specific to nonprofit borrowers. These models allowed NIAC and other lenders to underwrite these loans more easily and offer them at a larger scale. [25] American Nonprofits grew out of the now-ended pilot program. [26]

Thought Leadership

As an expert on insurance and nonprofit sector issues, Davis frequently contributes to conferences and publications such as the Social Capital Markets Conference, [27] Insurance Journal, [28] the Nonprofit Times, [29] the Nonprofit Quarterly, [30] the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Markets for Good, [31] Demotech, [32] and Blue Avocado. [33]

In 2014, Davis collaborated with CalNonProfits and CompassPoint to hold the first StrongerTogether Nonprofit Conference. The following year's 2015 StrongerTogether conference in Los Angeles sold-out and featured 20 guest speakers discussing topics such as advocacy, employment, insurance, leadership, management, risk management and strategy. [34]

Honors and awards

The Emmy-nominated documentary series Visionaries profiled Pamela Davis and Nonprofits Insurance Alliance twice, showing the growth of the organization from 1,500 member-insureds in 1997 to NIA's current status as "one of the most successful national nonprofit organizations in America." [35] [36] Other honors and awards include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insurance</span> Equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another in exchange for payment

Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.

Terrorism insurance is insurance purchased by property owners to cover their potential losses and liabilities that might occur due to terrorist activities.

Title insurance is a form of indemnity insurance, predominantly found in the United States and Canada, that insures against financial loss from defects in title to real property and from the invalidity or unenforceability of mortgage loans. Unlike some land registration systems in countries outside the United States, US states' recorders of deeds generally do not guarantee indefeasible title to those recorded titles. Title insurance will defend against a lawsuit attacking the title or reimburse the insured for the actual monetary loss incurred up to the dollar amount of insurance provided by the policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vehicle insurance</span> Insurance for road vehicles

Vehicle insurance is insurance for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other road vehicles. Its primary use is to provide financial protection against physical damage or bodily injury resulting from traffic collisions and against liability that could also arise from incidents in a vehicle. Vehicle insurance may additionally offer financial protection against theft of the vehicle, and against damage to the vehicle sustained from events other than traffic collisions, such as vandalism, weather or natural disasters, and damage sustained by colliding with stationary objects. The specific terms of vehicle insurance vary with legal regulations in each region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reinsurance</span> Insurance purchased by an insurance company

Reinsurance is insurance that an insurance company purchases from another insurance company to insulate itself from the risk of a major claims event. With reinsurance, the company passes on ("cedes") some part of its own insurance liabilities to the other insurance company. The company that purchases the reinsurance policy is referred to as the "ceding company" or "cedent". The company issuing the reinsurance policy is referred to as the "reinsurer". In the classic case, reinsurance allows insurance companies to remain solvent after major claims events, such as major disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. In addition to its basic role in risk management, reinsurance is sometimes used to reduce the ceding company's capital requirements, or for tax mitigation or other purposes.

Home insurance, also commonly called homeowner's insurance, is a type of property insurance that covers a private residence. It is an insurance policy that combines various personal insurance protections, which can include losses occurring to one's home, its contents, loss of use, or loss of other personal possessions of the homeowner, as well as liability insurance for accidents that may happen at the home or at the hands of the homeowner within the policy territory.

In insurance, the insurance policy is a contract between the insurer and the policyholder, which determines the claims which the insurer is legally required to pay. In exchange for an initial payment, known as the premium, the insurer promises to pay for loss caused by perils covered under the policy language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrorism Risk Insurance Act</span>

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) is a United States federal law signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 26, 2002. The Act created a federal "backstop" for insurance claims related to acts of terrorism. The Act "provides for a transparent system of shared public and private compensation for insured losses resulting from acts of terrorism." The Act was originally set to expire December 31, 2005, was extended for two years in December 2005, and was extended again on December 26, 2007. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act expired on December 31, 2014.

Liability insurance is a part of the general insurance system of risk financing to protect the purchaser from the risks of liabilities imposed by lawsuits and similar claims and protects the insured if the purchaser is sued for claims that come within the coverage of the insurance policy.

Mortgage insurance is an insurance policy which compensates lenders or investors in mortgage-backed securities for losses due to the default of a mortgage loan. Mortgage insurance can be either public or private depending upon the insurer. The policy is also known as a mortgage indemnity guarantee (MIG), particularly in the UK.

The liability insurance crisis in the United States of America refers to a volatile economic period during the mid-1980s. During these years, until about 1990, rising insurance premiums and an unavailability of coverage for several types of liability insurance led to a crisis that has been attributed, among others, to the expansion of tort doctrines for insurer liability and the McCarran-Ferguson exemption from antitrust laws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave insurance in the United States</span>

Slave insurance in the United States became an increasingly significant industry after the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, a federal law which took effect in 1808, prevented any new slaves from being imported to the U.S. Existing slaves, especially skilled workers, therefore became more valuable, and were often rented out to businesses; slave owners insured against the death or loss of these rented-out slaves. Industries which rented insured skilled slaves from their owners included blacksmithing, carpentry, railroad construction, coal mining, and steamboat operations, and insured rented slaves also included firemen and cooks. Chinese slaves, called "coolies", were also insured.

Hollard Group is a privately owned insurance group based in South Africa that operates under two insurance licences: short term and life. The company was established in 1980 by Robert Enthoven, and the Enthoven family retains the majority share, locally through The Enthoven Family Trust (EFT) and internationally through Capricorn Ventures International (CVI).

Insurance in the United States refers to the market for risk in the United States, the world's largest insurance market by premium volume. According to Swiss Re, of the $6.782 trillion of global direct premiums written worldwide in 2022, $2.959 trillion (43.6%) were written in the United States.

In the United States, health insurance marketplaces, also called health exchanges, are organizations in each state through which people can purchase health insurance. People can purchase health insurance that complies with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at ACA health exchanges, where they can choose from a range of government-regulated and standardized health care plans offered by the insurers participating in the exchange.

The Empowering Patients First Act is legislation sponsored by Rep. Tom Price, first introduced as H.R. 3400 in the 111th Congress. The bill was initially intended to be a Republican alternative to the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, but has since been positioned as a potential replacement to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The bill was introduced in the 112th Congress as H.R. 3000, and in the 113th Congress as H.R. 2300. As of October 2014, the bill has 58 cosponsors. An identical version of the bill has been introduced in the Senate by Senator John McCain as S. 1851.

Vehicle insurance in the United States is designed to cover the risk of financial liability or the loss of a motor vehicle that the owner may face if their vehicle is involved in a collision that results in property or physical damage. Most states require a motor vehicle owner to carry some minimum level of liability insurance. States that do not require the vehicle owner to carry car insurance include Virginia, where an uninsured motor vehicle fee may be paid to the state, New Hampshire, and Mississippi, which offers vehicle owners the option to post cash bonds. The privileges and immunities clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of citizens in each respective state when traveling to another. A motor vehicle owner typically pays insurers a monthly or yearly fee, often called an insurance premium. The insurance premium a motor vehicle owner pays is usually determined by a variety of factors including the type of covered vehicle, marital status, credit score, whether the driver rents or owns a home, the age and gender of any covered drivers, their driving history, and the location where the vehicle is primarily driven and stored. Most insurance companies will increase insurance premium rates based on these factors and offer discounts less frequently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State National Companies</span>

State National Companies, Inc., is a specialty provider of property and casualty insurance operating in two niche markets, Program Services and Lender Services. The company is licensed to do business in all 50 states and D.C.

Nonprofits Insurance Alliance (NIA) is an American group of cooperative 501(c)(3) nonprofit insurance organizations that provide liability and property insurance exclusively to other nonprofit organizations.

Commercial general liability insurance is a broad type of insurance policy which provides liability insurance for general business risks. In the United States insurance market this is known as Commercial General Liability (CGL).

References

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