This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

State Farm is the world's largest mutual property and casualty company, which means its owned by its policy holders. In 2007, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company paid $1.25 billion in dividends to its mutual auto insurance policy holders. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did get one of those checks.)

The corporate headquarters are based in Bloomington, Illinois, where State Farm was founded in 1922 by George J. Mecherle. He thought farmers were being charged too much for car insurance because they don't drive as much as city folk and didn't incur as many loses. Well, the insurance companies available at the time didn't agree with him, so he started his own car insurance company for farmers.

Today, State Farm has grown into the largest insurer of cars and homes in the United States, as well as the leading insurer of watercraft. State Farm is also a leader in insuring Canadian cars and homes. State Farm serves a total of 77 million auto, fire, life, and health policies in the U.S. and Canada with 67,000 employees and 17,000 agents. About half of its employees are involved in claims processing in one of its more than 390 claims offices.

When you go to State Farm's website, you'll find that State Farm chose Bloomington because of its "Midwestern values that State Farm was founded upon." Bloomington is also the home of two major universities -- Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan. This likely influences State Farm's giving as well. Most of its corporate donations go to education. The rest of its donations go to programs that focus on safety, such as seat belt education, driver safety, and safer homes.

Lita Epstein has written more than 20 books, including Trading for Dummies and Reading Financial Reports for Dummies.

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