He's been a teacher, a ship navigator, a submarine pilot, a loss adjuster, a politician and a fundraiser. So what's he doing at ACE?

"I've had twelve vocations" says Ralph Richardson, "I've really been lucky enough to do twelve different hobbies, which I happened to be paid for."

He now heads up the ACE Foundation which runs all of ACE's community projects and sponsorship programmes. You could call him a sort of professional philanthropist.

Mr. Richardson is possibly best known for his work at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI).

David Saul, the former Premier of Bermuda, invited him to join the board at BUEI. He went on to become director in 2000 and helped to revitalise the BUEI project.

At BUEI he was working with several US and local foundations so when the job at ACE became available he went from writing grant applications to reading them.

"It's funny because if you had asked me four or five years ago whether I might end up working at ACE, I would not have thought it was possible."

Mr. Richardson had ample local insurance experience from six years working at BF&M, initially as a loss adjuster and subsequently as general manager of personal insurance.

At that time he says he would have loved to work for ACE, but as he didn't have reinsurance experience, he didn't think there would be an appropriate role for him.

Interestingly enough, years back when he was at BF&M, a management consultant came and did a career assessment for employees to define where their career talents lay: "My assessment came out as community service."

He says of his present job that he could not think of a better match for what he enjoys, which ties in with his philosophy that: "Success is being in the right place and finding what you enjoy doing."

The ACE Foundation was founded in 1997. Mr Richardson says that bringing all the community giving functions within a foundation achieves two things:

"It allows a perpetual means of supporting the community and it provides a dedicated staff for these aims."

Mr. Richardson says that he has recently spent a lot of time assessing other foundations in the US. "The really successful ones are the ones that build strategic partnerships with the charities. It's one thing to write a cheque and it's quite another to get your employees to volunteer for that cause and to help them to ensure that the money goes to the best use."

He says that strategic partnerships can help charities to run themselves better.

"For example, some of our Bermuda charities are not very good at producing their accounts," he noted. Financial service providers such as ACE have the resources and expertise to help a charity organise such practices better.

Mr. Richardson says that one division in the ACE group has actually volunteered to help a charity improve their systems.

As well as co-operating with the non-profit organisations themselves, international company foundations are also beginning to co-operate amongst themselves. Mr. Richardson's colleague Candace Laing has been instrumental in forming the Donor Forum. The purpose of the Donor Forum is to get major donors together to talk about the challenges of supporting the various non-profit projects.

On the initiative of the Bank of Bermuda Foundation, the Donor Forum members recently undertook a tour of the hospital to get a feel for its future funding needs.

None of the foundations release figures for how much they donate on an annual basis, but Mr. Richardson reveals that the ACE Foundation supported 76 charities in Bermuda in 2001 and the total figure is "a significant amount".

The Centre on Philanthropy has put together a report which reports that in 2001 their dataset of local charities had a combined $166.4 million annual revenue and $154.8 million in annual expenses. These figures relate to the usual activities of the charities and do not include special, individual capital projects.

"That gives you some idea of the needs involved" says Mr. Richardson. Much of that money is expected to be raised through international companies.

However Mr. Richardson is convinced that the future success of most of the non-profit organisations will depend on what he calls "private and public collaboration".

One area where the ACE Foundation has made a particularly strong contribution has been the education field.

The Robert Clements scholarship supports two students per annum up to undergraduate level and the foundation also works with the Chamber of Commerce to support a third student with university costs.

Mr. Richardson says that all Bermudian students are eligible for these scholarships which are awarded strictly on merit.

The Madeleine Joelle Nest Egg Fund forms a special part of the foundation's work, awarding $10,000 per year to each of the Island's 18 public primary schools.

Madeleine Joelle was a politician and a key employee at ACE before her untimely death and the company set up the foundation in her memory.

The fact that reading scores have risen in all of the schools which the Madeleine Joelle Nest Egg Fund supports seems to be a very fitting memorial.

Another worthwhile project which the foundation supports with the government is the Bermuda Technology Education Collaborative.

The BTEC programme supplies Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy with computer resources and teacher training in the technology area.

Mr. Richardson says: "I'm very proud that ACE is a senior partner in this." He says he recently visited CedarBridge and sat in on some new computer classes for 15 and 16 year olds.

He was deeply impressed that the students were learning advanced programming skills that are offered at college level elsewhere.

The growth of the computer curriculum has apparently been a tremendous success at CedarBridge.

Teachers have told Mr. Richardson that their students are so enthusiastic about the classes that they will often get on with course work even before a staff member arrives on the scene.

A great source of satisfaction to Mr. Richardson is that some of the students in the new computer classes had previously had behavioural problems in other classes.

Getting them involved in a subject that they enjoy may have diverted future problems.

For this reason, Mr. Richardson says that the BTEC project is performing "a pre-emptive strike".

Despite all these worthwhile ventures, Mr. Richardson says that the local community are not aware of the positive contribution of international business. "That is definitely something we need to work on," he says.