When is the last time you started a conversation with “I gotta tell you about my insurance company!”? Never. We need Flo, Mayhem, Jake, a duck and an emu to make insurance conversational.

Well, mostly. I have to tell you about New York Life. Yes, life insurance, a product that falls somewhere in between boring and morbid, which only makes the efforts of the New York Life more fascinating.

When looking for a cause (or purpose), companies should be authentic and find something that is part of their DNA. The NYL team embraced an emotion they enounter thousands of times each day – grief.

The Foundation created one of the country’s best resources for childhood bereavement through grants, partnering with NGOs, and authoring children’s books. Watch the first two minutes of this video to get a sense of their commitment around this issue. Really interested? Check out this podcast.

When a company provides a service as valuable as helping people deal with the loss of their parents (or other loved ones), they don’t have to focus on the problem of becoming your parents (Ok, the commercials are funny). But, do you even remember which insurance company makes that commercial?