The Insurance Museum is offering founder donor recognition, including permanent listing on a founders’ wall and invitations to exclusive previews, through a campaign seeking three-year commitments to fund a London EC3 museum.
The UK charity said January 2026 marks the official launch of its IM Slip campaign, which aims to raise £1 million a year over the next three years to help open a permanent museum with an education centre dedicated to insurance in three years’ time. Donorship levels range from bronze (minimum £2,500 a year) to diamond (minimum £100,000 a year), with donors asked to commit a specified sum annually for three years.
Alongside financial support, the museum is offering formal recognition for donors. Founder donors will receive a signed letter of recognition from the IM chair, trustee or director, a personalised IM Founder certificate, and listing on the IM Founders’ wall online and permanently in the museum. Donors will also receive the digital IM Founder mark for use in communications, a media pack for PR and internal communications, invitations to previews and events, and quarterly updates on progress towards opening. Once the museum is open, the IM said founder donors or their representative will be invited to sign a physical IM Slip as a lasting legacy for the sector.
The campaign is built around three steps: donors make an annual donation for three years, share the slip with three people in their network, then “together we’ll open the IM in three years”.
IM director Howard Benge said: “We hope all insurance professionals will come together to support this campaign, to bring in the necessary funds to support IM’s ambitions, to be a fabulous centre for educational and historic resources. Through the museum and its educational outreach programmes, we aim to reach children, young people, parents, teachers, students and insurance professionals, to share the story of insurance, how it works and what role it plays in our society today. In particular, we hope to reach children - particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds - to inspire them to consider insurance as a future career.”
The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded the Insurance Museum a £249,700 grant, which the charity said will support Insurance Heritage at Risk, a three-year project to research insurance heritage and develop an education programme. In a separate announcement published by the museum, Benge said: “The £249,700 grant from the Heritage Fund will support programmes for schools, families, and young people. These programmes will introduce insurance, explore its history, explain how it supports people today, and highlight insurance careers for children and young people.”
The same statement said the project will examine insurance heritage, including collections held in public or corporate archives, record oral histories from those who worked in the market from the late 1960s to the 2000s, and archive Dr Mary Reynolds’ OBE personal collection charting her career in life assurance. Partners named include the Chartered Insurance Institute, the Business Archives Council, the City of London Libraries and the Bank of England.
IM chairman Reg Brown (pictured), a former president of the CII and founder and former chairman of the MGAA, said: “I never understood why the Bank of England had this fabulous museum but the insurance sector did not”. He added: “Insurance has been a wonderful career for me and I always wanted to give something back to the sector”.
