Assurance Funds Endowed Scholarship Through Harper College Educational Foundation

SCHAUMBURG, IL (January 6, 2010) - Assurance Agency, headquartered in Schaumburg, IL, recently endowed a $25,000 scholarship fund through the Harper College Educational Foundation. The fund will benefit working students suffering a financial hardship and/or facing significant life obstacles.

Assurance’s employee-driven charity program, Assurance Caring Together (ACT), began raising funds in 2007 in order to meet the company’s goal of eventually perpetuating an educational scholarship for local students in need. In a little under three years through the sale of a cookbook, company-wide raffle and 5k walk/run, Assurance collected enough funds to meet their goal in November of 2009.

With monies collected from the first two fundraising events, Assurance partnered with Harper College, located in Palatine, IL, in the fall of 2008 to create the “Assurance Caring Together Scholarship”. Funds were dispersed shortly after to provide 3 scholarships through the end of 2010. The $25,000 endowment created in 2009 will begin to pay out scholarships in the 2011-2012 academic year.

“Our goal was to raise funds on an annual basis to eventually perpetuate a scholarship fund. Each year we came up with a creative way to do so. Because of the caring, generous employees at Assurance, as well as their friends and family, we reached our goal sooner than expected and we couldn’t be more proud,” said Assurance Chairman of the Board and ACT Advisor, Jeff Blackburn. “We will continue raising funds to support education in our community in other ways.”

Last fall, Harper’s Community Catalyst newsletter noted, “Corporate citizens like Assurance have been instrumental in making Harper the outstanding institution that it is today. Through Assurance’s generosity, students are getting a chance at post-secondary education that they might have otherwise missed out on. Our sincere thanks to the Assurance team for their support of Harper students!”