Bankers Life Sticks With Fight Against Alzheimer's
This year, the campaign will shift to an all-virtual format.
Bankers Life says it will carry on this year with its Forget Me Not Days fundraising campaign for the Alzheimer’s Association.
In the past, the Chicago-based CNO Financial Group Inc. subsidiary has had hundreds of employees and agents stand outside raising money. Campaign team members rewarded donors by giving them packets of forget-me-not flower seeds.
This year, Bankers Life says the company will adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic by conducting all of the fundraising activities online, through a web-based portal and social media posts.
Resources
- The Forget Me Not Days campaign website is available here.
- An article about the 2019 Forget Me Not Days campaign is available here.
Bankers Life has raised about $6 million for the Alzheimer’s Association through the campaigns since 2003.
The company, which continues to write some stand-alone long-term care insurance, raised $369,000 through the 2019 campaign.
The Alzheimer’s Association uses the money to pay for dementia research, to pay for care for people with dementia, and to support for caregivers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the association’s mission in a new light. Many people with dementia end up living in nursing homes, and the pandemic has killed about 38,000 nursing home residents and staff members, according to AARP.
About 1.4 million people live in nursing homes. It’s not clear exactly how many people nursing homes employ, but the number appears to be somewhere on the order of 1 million. The numbers suggest that COVID-19 may have killed more than 1% of all of the people who live and work in U.S. nursing homes.
Scott Goldberg, president of the consumer division at CNO Financial Group, and a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Illinois chapter board, said in a comment about this year’s fundraising campaign that more than 5 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s, and more than 16 million serve as unpaid caregivers.
“Now more than ever, it is important to continue to support the important work of the Alzheimer’s Association in the fight against Alzheimer’s and its search for a cure,” Goldberg said.
— Read Bankers Life Raises $450,000 for Alzheimer’s Fight, on ThinkAdvisor.
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