The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group has committed $500,000 to two rural hospital foundations in eastern Ontario. The gifts take its recent healthcare giving across the communities where it was founded to $1 million.
The insurer is giving $250,000 to the Perth & Smiths Falls District Hospital Foundation for priority equipment and technology, and $250,000 to the Hôpital Glengarry Memorial Hospital Foundation in Alexandria. The Alexandria gift is going toward bringing the hospital’s first onsite CT scanner.
The gifts, announced over the Thanksgiving weekend, follow an earlier $500,000 pledge to the Ross Memorial Hospital Foundation in Lindsay. Tim Shauf, president and CEO of The Commonwell, chairs that foundation’s capital campaign.
“A mindset of thankfulness means that we understand we are part of an ecosystem that has enabled our success,” Shauf said.
The three towns correspond to The Commonwell’s founding companies: Lanark Mutual in the Perth and Smiths Falls area, Glengarry Mutual in Alexandria, and Farmers’ Mutual in Lindsay. The insurer says its roots in those communities go back more than 130 years.
The Commonwell said the gifts recognize the families, farms, businesses, members, broker partners and community groups that helped it grow. It described supporting local healthcare as a natural extension of its purpose as a mutual.
Rural hospitals in Ontario rely heavily on local fundraising for equipment. Provincial funding typically covers operating costs, while foundations raise money for capital purchases such as diagnostic imaging. Without a CT scanner, patients in places like Alexandria often have to travel to larger centres for scans, which delays diagnosis and treatment.
For a mutual that grew out of farm and small-town insurance, those communities are also where many of its policyholders live.
The Commonwell sells home, farm, auto and commercial insurance through independent brokers in Ontario. Unlike shareholder-owned insurers, mutuals are owned by their policyholders, and many tie their community spending to the regions they historically served. That gives brokers a values-based story to tell clients in rural markets, where a local insurer’s visible presence can matter in placing and keeping business.
