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Church Security Consultant Church Security Institute
Virginia Beach, Va.

With churches becoming new targets of violence, many have turned to a risk management program to mitigate the exposures.

Setting up a risk management consultancy may not seem all that innovative, but Bob Chauncey has focused his safety and security expertise on a group of clients that has suffered more than 140 violent incidences since the beginning of the year--churches.

After all, churches are considered "a safe sort of place," said Chauncey, but sometimes even God can't protect worshippers from violence. And, unfortunately, that's what a growing number of churches have suffered from, despite the liturgy that condemns violence. These aren't biblical times, when swords served as the primary protectors of churches.

So to secure and protect churches, Chauncey created his Church Security Institute in Virginia Beach, Va., a bit more than a year ago. He said his mission and calling is to educate the leaders at both small and large churches on the need to develop a risk management plan to prevent that enraged shooter from even entering the church.

Chauncey's approach is based upon knowledge he's gleaned through criminal justice and law enforcement training, along with his background in general and commercial insurance, security protection with electronic and personal surveillance, risk analysis and loss prevention, and serving as a chaplain.

Not that many years ago, few considered that a risk management analysis or plan for churches was even necessary. "Church and ministries are at so much more risk (today)," said Chauncey. "They need to be prepared."

Most often, the intruder is not even a member of the particular church but harbors uncontrolled anger, perhaps toward Christianity, as was the case in a shooting at the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., in December 2007.

The shooter, Matthew Murray, killed two sisters in the parking lot before entering the church, where he was shot and killed by a church member who volunteered as a security guard. Earlier in the day, Murray had killed two people at a missionary training center.

And consider what happened in May, when Dr. George Tiller, one of the very few late-term abortion providers in the country, was shot and killed in the foyer of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kan., where he was serving as an usher. The church had no security plan.

"Churches are prone to not think it will happen to them," said Chauncey, who is a Certified Protection Professional and has beefed up his safety and security knowledge through several security management seminars and church security conferences. "I'm meeting a need that I didn't see companies addressing," he said. Church resistance is tough to overcome.

"In a church you have a very open and inviting atmosphere, and it is hard to get people, pastors, members, deacons and trustees to realize that you can be open but also alert and observant to potential problems," he said. "You have to select and train greeters, ushers, ministerial staff and members that there is a way to welcome and accept new folks but to also be observant and ask questions to judge feelings."

His approach: Once he meets with church officials, he performs a risk analysis, identifying potential trouble areas such as large parking lots, dark areas inside the church where someone could hide, plus other vulnerable areas.

That includes the perimeter around the parking lot, the door greeters, the entrance to the sanctuary and closer to the pulpit, where the minister and others are open to attack. Training church volunteers serves as the crux of his risk prevention program.

Chauncey frankly prefers that volunteers learn to identify potential troublemakers and how to deal with them, either with nonlethal weapons, such as pepper spray and handcuffs, or guns. Some churches want their protection to be much more visible, so they may hire security guards to ward off the unwanted. In other churches you might find a loaded gun sitting behind the pulpit.

"Costwise, it's much less expensive for a church to train their own people," said Bob Petty, police chaplain with the Chesapeake, Va., police department and a security expert. "That makes people more comfortable; they know the members much better. Members take on the responsibility, so if they see someone who doesn't belong, they know that," Petty said.

On the other hand, a paid security guard doesn't know who belongs and who doesn't. Petty calls it "a home-court advantage."

"Using a new attitude and observation tools, plus having a trained and prepared team with not only a plan, but one that has been reviewed, practiced and improved along the way, you can do the most and best possible to provide a safe place." Chauncey said.

--By Julie Liedman

SVP, Program Director
The Redwoods Group
Morrisville, N.C.

Director, Technical Services
The Redwoods Group
Morrisville, N.C.

The managing general underwriter for nearly half the nation's YMCAs reviews data and finds new opportunities for safety and risk reduction.

Lifeguards at YMCAs insured through The Redwood Group are much better equipped to prevent drowning tragedies thanks to the extensive safety program Doug Page and Peter Kvale developed. This training goes well beyond CPR.

Instead, the augmented pool safety program focuses on where the lifeguards are positioned around the pool, assessing how often they rotate their positions and how many breaks they take, among other factors. No radios are allowed on the pool deck.

"One of the first things we did was to get rid of flexible plastic chairs because they're not at the elevation to adequately scan the bottom of the pool," said Page, senior vice president and program director at The Redwoods Group in Morrisville, N.C. Page and Kvale, the director of technical services, also scattered manikins and silhouettes on the bottom of the pool to simulate drowning victims and timed how long it took lifeguards to notice.

Page said, ideally, lifeguards should react in about 10 seconds, but lifeguards at the YMCAs took about a minute or so to jump into action.

So, does that training work? You bet. According to their own data, the training and influence of The Redwoods Group staff has improved operating behaviors to the point that in 2007, there were zero drowning deaths in guarded YMCA pools insured by Redwoods.

That's typical of how The Redwoods Group operates--it creates a culture of safety (its company motto is "serve others") through its risk management programs, by identifying a YMCA's exposures, and instituting a loss-control program to prevent serious injuries and keep the kids, parents and staff safe. The heart of the operation is its quantitative approach to risk management.

Their data-gathering is so all-encompassing and continuous that it allows Page to keep his finger pressed tightly on the pulse of the YMCA exposures by carefully examining all the data from their customers and other data-collecting organizations, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Transportation Safety Board. The system requires every customer to submit an incident report, no matter how large or small, from broken bones to death.

"We receive over 50,000 incident reports each year," Page said. His staff analyzes all these reports, looking for trends and where they're happening. "It's very quantitative and backs up our hunches." Even after Redwoods has identified and solved a problem, they reanalyze the data. "I think it's unique for a managing general underwriter to use that (quantitative approach)," said Page.

Thanks to that approach, the rollover dangers of driving 12- to 15-passenger vans popped up on Redwoods' radar screen in 2004. With 80 percent of the insured YMCAs using these vans, Redwoods saw the opportunity to avoid future liabilities.

"We were the first to tell them to get out of them," said Page. Today fewer than 5 percent of YMCAs still use the vans, and the remaining Ys have plans to phase them out.

The edict included a warning that Redwoods would not insure the Ys that didn't comply. Page said they only lost two clients.

As a MGU, Redwoods serves a niche market--about half of the 1,000 YMCA organizations across the country and, more recently, 25 Jewish Community Centers, which have similar risks.

"Doug knows the business extremely well," said Joel Porten, a safety professional and assistant vice president at Global Loss Prevention, previously known as AIG Consultants. Lexington Insurance is the carrier on the YMCA program.

"He has communicated a variety of different things to his customers on a regular basis," Porten said.

Porten admitted that "it was a huge leap of faith on our part" to take on the loss-control coordination for Redwoods due to the nature of the clients. But during the five or so years that Porten's firm has done business with Redwoods, he's had no complaints. He said losses have been kept to a minimum and "we pay their claims."

Indeed, from January 2001 to January 2008, Redwoods' 13 paid losses ranged from $2,802 to $932,115. Following a $500,000 sauna fire loss at a North Carolina YMCA in 2007, where there were no automatic sprinklers, Page researched trends in YMCA fires and discovered that most fires at Ys started in saunas and caused more than $1.7 million in losses from April 2000 to April 2007.

So Page developed a pretty simple, and cheap, remedy. Redwoods recommended that Ys install one high temperature sprinkler head tied to the water line above each sauna. That solution cost Ys less than $300, versus the much higher cost of a fully automatic sprinkler system.

Since launching the sauna safety program in January 2008, total losses due to sauna fires are at an all-time company low--one sauna fire loss over an 18-month period.

Over the same time period, there's been a 32 percent increase in the number of YMCAs installing sprinklers in their saunas.

--By Julie Liedman

The Redwood Group sums up its corporate values in two words: "serve others." Doug Page and Peter Kvale take that mission seriously, especially with their clients. Redwood took the unusual step to incur a financial loss last year because of the recession, rather than layoff employees and reduce services to clients--that is, to "serve others."

Both men advocate a culture of safety among their fellow employees and clients. It's this commitment to service and the service culture that distinguishes them as Responsibility Leaders. Customers and fellow employees are key constituencies who are part of a commitment to responsibility.

Doug and Peter's unusual solution to the YMCA sauna fire problem, as well, helped to change the culture toward safety at YMCAs. And these two Responsibility Leaders won't stand on the sidelines if their clients don't commit to key risk management issues. For example, they refused to insure 15-passenger vans. Because of that policy, two clients left. All these efforts stem back to that corporate philosophy to "serve others."

Deputy Executive Director, General Counsel
Public Entity Risk Institute
Fairfax, Va.

An online resource for a group of entities with very special needs.

What makes creating a Web site so innovative? When the Web site is designed for small and medium nonprofit organizations that can't find insurance. That's the essence of the new Web site Claire Reiss has been developing for the past three years and which launched in May.

As the deputy executive director and general counsel at the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI), a nonprofit itself, Reiss knew there were several other insurance information Web sites but none devoted solely to educating and informing the small nonprofit world, which typically has a tough time finding carriers willing to insure them.

PERI's mission is to develop risk management education and training resources for small and medium nonprofits, including local governments and school districts. So the Web site, www.insuranceformynonprofit.org, fits the bill.

"Her vision to help small nonprofits from this kind of portal was very creative," said Sean Sweeney, chief marketing officer at Philadelphia Insurance Companies, one of PERI's co-sponsors and a participating insurer.

The road to creating the Web site was littered with all sorts of bumps and starts-and-stops. "We went down a couple of different alleys and realized we could accomplish similar goals (educating nonprofits about insurance) by doing a Web site," said Reiss.

Certainly there are some major insurance-related Web sites that appeal to nonprofit organizations and offer risk management advice, including the Nonprofit Risk Management Center in Leesburg, Va., that worked with PERI to develop the new Web site, and the site of the Public Risk Management Association (PRIMA), which primarily functions as a professional organization for public entities.

"Melanie (Herman, the executive director of the Nonprofit Risk Management Center) had a lot of inquiries from nonprofits that nobody wanted to insure," said Reiss, particularly the small community nonprofits.

So that became her all-embracing task--to discover a way to help nonprofits identify their risks and exposures and figure out and understand their insurance needs.

"I'm not aware of anyone else doing what we're doing," said Reiss. "It (the Web site) actually gives advice or information to try to get insurance."

As a primer for nonprofits, the Web site's key elements include: a free insurance needs self-assessment tool with basic guidance and suggestions based upon the nonprofit's responses; educational information about insurance, including material provided by the Nonprofit Risk Management Center; and a process for submitting requests for insurance quotes.

For a $25 fee, for five years subscribers have access to a more complete assessment report and can return to the site as often as they want to see if changing circumstances might alter the nonprofit's risk assessment and site suggestions.

Once you register with the Web site, the exposure self-assessment questionnaire asks you a series of multiple-choice and yes/no questions to determine the type of business you have and where you're located.

Then it asks the $64,000 question: "Does your organization have a risk management plan?" If you click on "no," a pop-up box tells you, "Consider developing a risk management plan for your organization. A risk management plan helps you take a more systematic approach to identifying and managing your organization's risk, including the purchase of the appropriate insurance for your organization's risk profile."

Reiss explained that, "as you work through the assessment, you get information tailored to what your response to the question was."

The series of questions are designed to be simple and easy to respond to, without revealing any identifying information, but eventually they get down to specifics regarding your exposures and insurance needs. PERI makes it very clear that it's not acting as an agent to sell insurance but only as an educator and conduit to help nonprofits eventually hook up with an insurer, if that's their goal.

As with any business, Reiss's biggest hurdle now is attracting nonprofit users to the site through advertising or whatever means are available. Thus far the site traffic is small--just under 1,430 hits by July, with users spending an average of four minutes on the site.

"We've had some spikes from our online advertising and an e-mail blast," she said. She's in the process of setting up a link with the Nonprofitexpert.com Web site, which offers information for nonprofits but doesn't offer much about insurance. So it's "a pretty important link for us."

"I think for us the challenge is getting the word out," Reiss said. So now you know.

--By Julie Liedman