128 – Insurance for Volunteers – Do You Need It? with William Henry

September 19, 2024

Episode #128: Insurance for Volunteers – Do You Need It? with William Henry 

 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi invites William Henry onto the podcast to discuss the critical yet often overlooked topic of insurance for volunteers. They delve into the need-to-have and nice-to-have insurance policies for nonprofit organizations that engage volunteers. 

The discussion touches on general liability, auto liability, and professional liability insurance, as well as specific volunteer coverage and the importance of due diligence. William also shares practical tips on maintaining a safe environment for volunteers and comprehensively addresses common misconceptions about the Federal Volunteer Protection Act. This episode is essential for volunteer coordinators and nonprofit leaders looking to ensure robust risk management practices! 

Insurance for Volunteers – Episode Highlights

• [03:11] – Guest Introduction: William Henry 
• [08:02] – Types of Volunteer Insurance Policies 
• [30:57] – Clarifying Coverage for Volunteers 
• [31:22] – Importance of Due Diligence 
• [31:45] – Endorsements and Policy Modifications 
• [32:18] – Communicating Coverage to Volunteers 
• [34:20] – Safety Training Programs 
• [35:10] – Implementing Safety First Culture 
• [36:15] – Legal and Ethical Considerations 
• [36:55] – Understanding Liability and Insurance 
• [37:57] – Essential Coverages for Organizations 
• [54:36] – Preparing for Claims 
• [59:18] – Final Thoughts and Resources 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• Volunteer Management Progress Report 
• Volunteers Insurance Service Association, Inc. Website 
• William Henry’s Email 
• Find William on LinkedIn  
• Tony Goodrow, “Ensuring Data Security in Volunteer Management: A Comprehensive Guide,” VIS Volunteers Blog 
• Assisted Rides 
• Better Impact 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #128 Transcript: Insurance for Volunteers – Do You Need It? with William Henry 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the volunteer nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And today we’re going to talk about a topic that honestly, I think most of us don’t know enough about, and that is insurance for volunteers. And the reason I think we, a lot of us, don’t know about this is because it’s been coming to my attention as I’m working through some risk management and mitigation and prioritization projects with some of my consulting clients. When I ask what kind of insurance you have, that’s one of the ways that you mitigate risk or manage risk. And they looked at me with a blank stare and I said, okay, you don’t have any idea if you have any, does your insurance for your organization, does your umbrella insurance cover volunteers. 

And they still look at me with a blank stare. So, I decided I would ask my colleague, William Henry, who is an expert in this. He’s been doing it for years, for decades and tells us, no insurance for volunteers, do you need it? And I hope that by the end of this, that you’ll either know you need insurance, or you’ll have very informed, smart questions to ask. 

I didn’t think a lot about insurance, but years ago, and I think William, you probably don’t know this, but I used to work for the insurance commissioner of the state of Washington. Yeah, so I worked in a regulatory agency That ran a consumer support volunteer driven consumer support Uh function out of the insurance commissioner’s office and we our volunteers counseled on Medicare Medicaid back  

Then we had high risk pools, etc. And the thing that shocked me above all things was When I got into it how much insurance is really needed and we don’t realize It’s too late and you know, I didn’t really think about it much until I started working in that state agency. 

So William, I’m really excited to have you. Thanks for joining me today, and I’m really excited to get this conversation started. 

William: Well, thanks so much for having me, Tobi. This is a great opportunity to talk to people about who have insurance responsibilities, but it’s an ordeal they go through the renewal once a year, there’s an element of trust there that they may or may not be comfortable with uh, when they sign that premium check, do they really know what they’re getting for that or not. 

So maybe I can clarify some of the areas that are uh, ordinarily a little bit murky, even for people who know everything else about their job.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Or if they even have insurance to begin with. I think, I think there’s a lot of that. So let me introduce you. William Henry is vice president of Volunteers Insurance Service Association, Inc., which provides insurance and risk management services to nonprofit organizations and governmental entities that engage volunteers. So, they focus directly on volunteering involving organizations. BIS has been involved in this program in continuous operation since 1972 and has some 3, 500 members nationwide. 

In addition to offering accident liability and auto liability insurance designed specifically for volunteers, BIS also provides its members 24 7 access to a variety of risk management documents and training resources. There is more information at www.visvolunteers.com, and again, we’ll post a link to that in the show notes. 

William is a frequent speaker and author on managing risk of volunteer management. He is also coauthor, now this is interesting, of The Crown of Life Society, the first novel ever to address exploitation of older persons and family caregiving as primary topics. He lives in Richmond, Virginia where he is active in community theater as well. So, tell me, before we even get into insurance, tell me how you got into writing novels.  

William: After an incident in my own family in which, um, an elderly person was exploited financially, I began to dig into how big a problem this was. And I talked to elder law attorneys who specialize in, you know, this issue and have been seen a lot of horror stories in their practice and ended up collaborating with the president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, on this novel.  

We chose a fiction format so that we could have composite characters, and we could just tell more stories and, hopefully, be entertaining at the same time. So, when it came out, a lot of advocacy groups for older persons asked us to, uh, write articles and have interviews, trouble spots, red flags, things like this people could watch out for. So, maybe we’ve enabled some people, some adults with, who have older loved ones to stay out of trouble that they otherwise might encounter.  

Tobi: Yeah, that’s a great format, you know, it’s a, you know, rather than writing a how to book, something that’s very dry, it’s something that everybody can understand. 

I love it. I love that approach. So, let’s get into this. So also let us know, let, tell our audience, I always like to kick us off with how people got into volunteerism. Um, we talked a little bit about what you do at, uh, VIS, but how did you get into the work that supports volunteerism? And why choose insurance for volunteers versus, you know, there’s plenty of other ways to become an insurance broker. 

William: Right. Well, I’ve had a long career in insurance. Insurance, particularly the communication aspects, internal and external communications in insurance, and I had got an opportunity to join Volunteers Insurance Service, and I was excited about that because it’s a unique organization. It’s the only one that provides these three types of insurance designed specifically for volunteers. 

Accident, and Liability and auto liability just for volunteers. So that’s how I got involved in the whole volunteer community.  

Tobi: Interesting. Interesting. And we’re going to dig into what the different types of insurances are. But, you know, in today’s world, you know, now that you’ve been working in the field for decades now, why do you think Volunteerism is important today. 

William: Oh, the needs that nonprofits address are so great. Uh, they could never be handled by paid staff alone. And that’s not new. I mean, it’s always been that way. But also, besides helping the populations, uh, in the, their communities, uh, volunteers also help themselves by that activity. Um, you probably remember the late, great Susan Ellis, the founder of the Energize Publishing Company. 

She said, Volunteerism as an activity of choice, unconnected to earning a living, volunteering frees the doer to focus on what he or she really wants to do. So, what could be greater than doing what you want to do?  

Tobi: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think it’s a way for community members to help their community and organizations are basically the catalyst for that. 

Let’s start with the basics. So, what are the insurance policies? You mentioned accident liability and auto liability for volunteers. So, under insurance for volunteers, that umbrella of types of policies. Can you break them down in simple terms because not everybody is really adapt or has previous knowledge aside from buying their own auto policy, etc. having their homeowner’s policy or their renter’s insurance. What do these three types of policies cover?  

William: Okay, to set that up. I think I need to touch just briefly on Policies that are designed to protect the organization itself, and then I think you’ll see how the volunteer coverages dovetail with that, and we can divide these into two kinds. The need to have and the nice to have everyone’s on a tight budget. 

So, let’s talk briefly about insurance coverages. Every nonprofit organization needs to have. And the first of those would be general liability. Um, no matter how safety conscious you are, your staff or your volunteers might injure someone or damage someone’s property, bodily injury, property damage and personal injury, which means Things like libel and slander also are covered under the general liability. 

Now the cost depends on what you do and your payroll and some other variables, but most organizations that are listening to us today. probably would have a minimum premium of between 500 and 800 for 1, 000, 000 per occurrence of general liability coverage and 2, 000, 000 of aggregate, which just means the total number of claims you could have in one policy period. 

So that general liability is, is a bedrock kind of insurance protection.  

Tobi: So, when you say policy, you say premium, what period is that for, for a month? 

William: Per one year.  

Tobi: Per year.  

William: One year. Of course, we, your, your audience is very large and very small organizations, but right in the middle probably would be a 500 to 800 per year cost for that policy.  

Tobi: And does it, does it cover, you said it covers damage to property. Does it cover damage to property both at your organization and when people who represent you are at other places of business, organizations, et cetera?  

William: It damages the property that would belong to a third party. So not your own property, but you might have a client’s property in your office. 

It would cover that, or it could cover damage, offsite bodily injury and property damage, and not only should the organization have it, but they should also make sure that any vendor that they work with. Also has it. And one more step I’ll get into. We have our own arcane vocabulary and insurance, but if you have your organization named as an additional insured on your vendors policy that will protect you if they get sued, and your organization also gets sued.  

Tobi: Yep. Yep. I’ve had that when I do consulting projects with larger organizations They’ll have me have put them on my policy and I’ll send them proof of insurance and it’s easy to get that gang It’s not difficult to you can get it in a day usually So what other policies does an organization need to have overall aside from the volunteer program? 

William: Well while we’re on the general liability Let me tell you two things Tobi that Most people listening have never been told by their agent. One is that most insurance companies don’t really care about nonprofit organizations. Now, that sounds harsh, but it’s the reality. They want commercial operations as their customers. 

Now, they will write a policy for a nonprofit organization, but it’s going to be more like what they write for businesses. So, you have a round hole that your nonprofit organization and someone is going to take that square peg and they’re going to shave the edges off it and hammer it in until it somewhat fits. 

But there are exceptions. There are insurance companies, and anyone who wants to contact me, I can help, that do specialize and understand in the nonprofit exposure. That’s one thing, is that most nonprofit Insurance company or most insurance companies don’t understand nonprofits. Now, the second thing, a big takeaway for me with this session is when you have a general liability policy. 

Your volunteers are automatically included, and it doesn’t cost a penny more. Now, that sounds great, but it’s not, and here’s why. You have chosen a limit of liability on your general liability policy. So, for a lot of organizations, they’ve chosen a 1 million per occurrence limit. If a volunteer injures someone or damages someone’s property, and both that volunteer and the organization get sued, you’re in the position of sharing that limit of liability that you’ve chosen. 

So, let’s say that the lawsuit results in a settlement or a judgment in court of a million and a half or two million dollars. Well, you’ve, you’ve only got a million and the insurance company is not going to pay a penny more than that. So, it could result in a serious out of pocket loss in that situation. 

But there is a solution. You can take volunteers off your general liability policy. So, somebody might be saying what I get something for free and I’m going to give it back. Yes, because if you do take volunteers off your policy and insure them separately. You can keep those limits of liability for you. 

You have the whole million dollars in that scenario to defend the organization and its employees. And that’s, that’s what you bought it for. And meanwhile, you can protect your volunteer with. Another policy that provides a million dollars just for them. So, that’s what we recommend. 

Tobi: So, is volunteer liability coverage about the same as the general liability for the organization or do they differ?  

William: It’s a lot less. It’s two dollars and fifteen cents per volunteer per year. 

Tobi: Okay.  

William: With a hundred dollar minimum premium so you can’t buy a sandwich for that. 

Tobi: Yeah, how can I hear my volunteer coordinators thinking, well, I don’t know exactly how many volunteers we have for months on month. How do you manage that? When someone applies for our volunteer liability coverage? 

William: We say, just tell us how many volunteers you would have, what’s the greatest number you would have at any given time. So, if you have like one big fundraiser event per year, and you have 50 volunteers that show up, that would be the number to ensure. You may have 200 on your roster, but you don’t need to buy 200.  

Tobi: When your organization has volunteer liability coverage, if the claim were higher, let’s say they say you lost a lawsuit and the claim was higher than the one million per occurrence, would the volunteer’s own insurance pick up after that? Or is the organization liable for that after? 

William: You know, the volunteer might have homeowner insurance with a personal umbrella over that, that coverage could respond. But the volunteer liability policy would provide their legal defense and cover any judgment or settlement up to 1, 000, 000.  

Tobi: Okay, great. I would think that, you know, especially for volunteers who are interacting with the public on a regular basis are, you know, engaging in direct service with clients who are doing work that like tax aids, for example, providing free tax service or providing in our case, when I used to work for the insurance commissioner, they did, Medicare and Medicaid counseling, things that would impact someone’s pocketbook, where if there were, uh, A mistake made that client might come back and say, look, this volunteer is liable. Does volunteer liability also cover errors and omissions or is that a separate?  

William: No. I want to be sure that that’s clear. It only covers bodily injury, property damage, or. Personal injury, as I defined earlier, things like libel and slander, defamation, copyright infringement, things like that. If someone is providing counseling or professional level assistance, like you mentioned with tax preparation, that would not be covered. 

They should have errors and omissions, also called professional liability, for that coverage.  

Tobi: And is that separate?  

William: That would be.  

Tobi: Separate for volunteers than the organization’s errors and, you know.  

William: Yes, it would be.  

Tobi: Okay, so, so, that’s something for organizations that have volunteers engaged. So, I didn’t realize copyright infringement and libel was in, you know, whatever I think, like, a general liability, I think, slips and falls, right? Or somebody doing damage to somebody’s personal property. I don’t think of it, but intellectual property is someone’s personal property.  

William: Yes.  

Tobi: And slander or libel, you’re basically, allegedly impacting someone’s personal reputation. So, I can see how those fit under that, that umbrella of general liability. 

William: So, the other need to have coverage would be directors’ and officers’ liability. I’m sure most of your listeners have that, but without it, members of the board could be putting their homes, their businesses at risk. So, it’s very important for the organization to provide Directors and officers liability. 

It covers what’s called wrongful acts. In other words, it’s not bodily injury It’s not property damage, but it’s somehow mismanagement or allegations of mismanagement of the organization or its resources someone might say, where you strayed from your mission and you’re, or you’re violating your bylaws, but the most common kind of claim is discrimination. 

Someone says you failed to hire me. Someone sexually harassed me, and you didn’t do anything about it. I should have been promoted. I didn’t get promoted. Those sorts of employment liability claims are the most common. 

Tobi: Interesting because in the end It is your board of directors that is ultimately responsible for all hiring firing in an organization as well as managing Including the executive director. 

They have the power to hire and fire the executive director. So interesting Okay, what else should organizations have in place as a need to have?  

William: All right. Yeah, under the need to have workers’ compensation, of course, is required for employees. Most states do not require that volunteers be covered under workers compensation. 

And it’s not a good idea even if that option is available. Um, it’s much less expensive to purchase accident insurance for those volunteers. And it’s, it’s available from A variety of sources. What we offer is a policy that provides up to 50, 000 for treatment of a volunteer’s injuries. And, um, the cost is 40 per volunteer per year. 100 minimum premium. So, I think we’re still under the cost of a sandwich. Yeah. Yeah, no, and, and it’s, uh, ours is more than other insurance if they have it. But if they, if all they have is Medicare, ours is primary coverage. So, that’s good for older volunteers. Our coverage would be primary over Medicare. 

Tobi: Oh, so let, let me make sure everybody understands that. So, if the volunteer has insurance through their employer or their state, they have, they’re in the, they’ve purchased their own insurance through the exchanges, et cetera, then volunteer accident insurance would pay second secondary. But if they have Medicare, regardless of whether they have a supplement, if they have Medicare, then this insurance would pay primary. 

Is that true? That’s right. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So so if you have a lot of older volunteers, this is really going to help with out of pocket because the volunteers are not going to have to pay deductibles copays, et cetera, because Even if they have their own insurance, they’re going to have to, if they haven’t paid off their deductible for the year, then they’re going to have to pay on their deductible and then any co pays, co-insurance, et cetera. 

So, if a volunteer is injured on the job, they still may have to pay some out of pocket before this other insurance kicks in. Is there a limit to where it kicks in?  

William: 50, 000 is the maximum that will be paid. And it does pick up, as you say, deductibles and co pays.  

Tobi: How much would they pay out of pocket with their own insurance before this other, if they don’t have Medicare, I’m saying? 

William: If they don’t have any other coverage at all, then it’s from first dollar. It’s first dollar coverage if they don’t have other coverage. 

Tobi: The volunteer accident insurance?  

William: Yes.  

Tobi: But if they had an employer plan, when does the volunteer accident insurance kick in when they’re getting covered? 

William: Whenever the limits are reached for the employer plan.  

Tobi: Got it. So, you would go to your maximum annual coverage and then if that, in the rare case, it’s very rare.  

William: And, but that is the most common kind of claim that we have is accidents, particularly false. Interesting. And if I, on a side note, one of the reasons, we do everything we can to prevent claims. 

So, in that vein, we have what we call preventer papers, many of which are devoted to injury prevention, including falls, back injuries. Every other kind of injury that we’ve ever seen in the history of our program, so that organizations can train their volunteers in safe practices.  

Tobi: Hmm. That’s smart. I mean, even if you have insurance, you don’t want anybody to get hurt on the job. 

No. What happens if a volunteer, I know I’m, I’m, I’m like just pop popcorning with questions, but things are coming to mind and I’m sure our listeners are, these things are probably coming to mind as well. What if your insurance is, if your volunteers are working remotely? Let’s say they experience a You know, carpal tunnel from doing data entry day in and day out for your organization, or they’re working at home, and they fall in their office, but it’s during the time they’re working as a volunteer. 

When volunteers are working remotely, is their own homeowner’s insurance or their own medical insurance covering them? Or is there some type of policy that can protect volunteers and organizations?  

William: With our policy, it doesn’t make any difference where they’re working as long as they’re in the United States. 

Tobi: Got it.  

William: Which you know, a lot of organizations were, are involved in disaster response.  

Tobi: Mm hmm.   

William: So, they may be going from North Carolina to Louisiana to help. And if, if that’s the case, a claim would still be covered even though that volunteer lives in North Carolina.  

Tobi: Got it. And for those of you who are listening from other countries, even though William and his team only offer coverage in the U.S. These are great questions to ask your insurer and to ask around when you’re talking to other organizations about what insurers they use. Once you start talking to an agent or broker, it’s good to understand the structure and then ask the right questions. So, I think this is helpful regardless of where folks are living around the world. 

So, what, are there any other basic policies?  

William: One other. Okay, one other does auto liability. Some organizations. Own vehicles for what they do. Uh, others don’t own them. Uh, there’s different kinds of policies for those two situations. If you own vehicles, you should have a business auto policy and the premium just depends on what kind of vehicles you are using, what they’re used for, where they are garaged and some other variables. 

If you, this protects the organization. If. Someone driving one of your vehicles is at fault in an accident. Also, protecting the organization if you don’t have vehicles that you own is, um, here we go with that insurance vocabulary again. It’s called non owned and hired. Automobile coverage. So again, this is to protect the organization. 

If your staff or your volunteers are using their own vehicles or maybe vehicles that they’ve rented and cause an accident, the organization has a claim against it. This coverage responds and it’s not very inexpensive, just depending on where you are. You might be able to get a policy for 200 to 500 a year. 

Tobi: It’s for auto liability, for organizational auto liability. So, does every organization’s auto liability policy cover volunteers? Or do you need to make sure that’s included? Or do you need to buy separate for volunteers?  

William: Actually, the business auto policy only covers volunteers typically. If they are transporting other people, they could have a load of bottled water going to some event, some festival event in the, in the owned vehicle and, and cause an accident. 

And if a volunteer is driving that vehicle, it would not be covered typically. So, yeah, you must be careful about that, but with, um. With volunteers, as far as protecting them is concerned, the non-owned and hired policies don’t protect them as volunteers. They only protect the organization. So, the solution is excess volunteer auto coverage. 

And what we offer is a policy that provides up to 500, 000 in limits that are over the volunteer’s personal auto policy. So, let’s say that they are driving their vehicle, and they have whatever the state minimum limits of liability require, and they cause an accident that, where the damage is more than those limits, that’s when our policy comes in. So, in many cases, it’s prevented quite an out-of-pocket loss to the volunteer by having that coverage.  

Tobi: So that’s for coverage of driving any vehicle, not just the organization’s vehicle.  

William: That’s when they’re driving their vehicles.  

Tobi: Their own vehicles. Okay.  

William: As many organizations, let’s say that they transport older persons or those with disabilities to own their errands or doctor’s appointments or whatever, you know, a lot of programs like that. So typically, the volunteers drive their own vehicles. So, this would provide coverage if they were at fault in an accident in that situation, costs 7.75 per volunteer per year.  

Tobi: So, but that is a coverage is above and beyond the volunteer’s own insurance. 

William: Correct. So, it’s secondary. And on that point, Volunteer managers with their volunteer drivers, they should be making sure that at each insurance renewal, they ask for a copy of that certificate of insurance so that they can be sure their volunteers are currently covered. 

Tobi: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.  

William: For that matter, if your state requires a safety inspection annually on vehicles, they should also put that on their calendar for each volunteer and say, um, let me see your state. Inspection certificate for this year. Okay. So, all that comes under due diligence Tobi, you know, and the more due diligence you apply the more you shield yourself from a successful liability claim. 

Tobi: Yeah, let me recap this so we have it, and I want to ask one more question about this. So, the organization’s auto policy that includes non-owned and hired We’ll include both the organization’s own vehicles driving. And for staff, employees driving the organization’s vehicles and anything like, let’s say they, you know, they rent, they were traveling for a conference, and they rented a car from Avis or whatever. 

The organization’s policy would cover them, and it would only cover volunteers that policy if they were transporting other people. Correct. They’re driving either the organization’s vehicle or their own vehicle, that coverage does not cover them.  

William: If they’re driving their own vehicle. And they have, you have the non-owned and hired policy. The organization would be protected. The only coverage we’ve talked about that would protect the volunteer is the excess auto liability.  

Tobi: Okay. So, it doesn’t really matter what vehicle a volunteer is driving in the end, unless they’re transporting other people, their insurance would pay first. 

William: Under the business auto policy. Now, if they’re driving their own vehicles. They can be transporting other people or for any other purpose if they’re at fault in an accident the insurance would respond  

Tobi: So, I think that’s important for organizations to be clear with volunteers that are using Either that are using their own vehicles or driving the organization’s vehicles. 

Let’s say they’re doing meals on wheels and they’re using the organization’s van or whatever I think is important for organizations to be clear with or with volunteers about what? Coverage is or is not in place for them. And I think you’re right when it comes to due diligence, making sure that the organization also has on file, as you said, the copy of the certificate of insurance, if there’s a safety inspection, that’s required year, year in, year out, that kind of thing. 

But if folks don’t understand that I can imagine many volunteers thinking, Oh, well, no worries. Then, the organization’s going to cover me if I’m in an accident.  

William: Well, there’s one caveat to that, there are many, many kinds of what we call endorsements, which modify a policy. So, if they’re, for example, they have their own vehicles that volunteers will be driving, but not transporting clients, they might ask their insurance agency, okay, what endorsement might be available to add to our policy that would close that coverage gap? 

Tobi: Okay. Great. Yeah. So gang, you really do need to, I think the bottom line, the takeaway is there’s a lot of, especially with auto liability, I think there’s a lot of ins and outs and you really need to understand what coverage you have, what coverage you don’t have, and you need to be able to. Explain it to volunteers in clear terms, you know, in your volunteer handbook, or wherever, so that they understand, you know, where their coverage leaves off, and where other coverage might pick up. 

You know, in the end, if volunteers are driving their own vehicle, then you know, the risk of having an accident is the same risk as having the, having an accident in their regular lives, unless they’re doing something, you know, like, uh, I can imagine maybe in disaster relief risk might go up a little bit, you know, more vehicles around, maybe there’s still severe weather events happening. 

So, there’s, there’s higher risk for someone’s personal vehicle to get damaged than it is in your general life. But I do think it’s fair and ethical to make sure that your volunteers understand how they’re covered.  

William: I know we’re talking mainly about insurance, but so it’s so important that volunteers buy into your culture of safety consciousness. 

There are so many ways to do that when they’re, they should be screened and certainly you want to check their motor vehicle record. We work with Sterling Volunteers as a partner and anyone, any volunteer who’s going to drive on your behalf, you should obtain that motor vehicle record. And we recommend Sterling because that record can be updated in real time. 

You don’t have to just check it every year and the orientation and training. I wouldn’t let a volunteer get behind the wheel until you are certain that they understand, you know, who they are going to be transporting, what they are going to be doing? Ride along with them. I know time is precious, but to ride along with that volunteer and to be sure that they are capable and dedicated to safety, we have a whole variety of safety training programs for vehicle operation. 

Including an online safety course that we developed several years ago with the National Volunteer Transportation Center. A volunteer can take that self-paced course in about an hour. After each module, there are questions that they must answer before they can advance to the next module. A lot of our volunteers and Member organizations are making it a requirement and they publicize that with their supporters and their clients. Hey, all our drivers have been through this training course.  

Tobi: Yeah, and I think I could imagine it You know; I know people are like, oh lord. I have to you know; we have to You know require more training on the other hand. I think it’s how you present it I mean, I think if you present to Prospective volunteers that you’re a safety first organization and these are the ways that you protect You potential harm to volunteers, to employees, to clients, to community partners, to the organization’s health and welfare and sustainability itself. 

Whenever I’ve added additional requirements like background checks, for example, I remember I worked in an organization where we didn’t have background checks, but the volunteers were working with very sensitive private information of our clients and including social security numbers. 

And so, I said, well, gang, we’ve got to do background checks because there’s a risk of potential theft of personal identity here. And when I explained it clearly and talked about the mission and protecting our clients, I had not a single volunteer quit. Not one.  

William: Yeah, volunteers want to know that you have those kinds of procedures in place and all that you do in that regard helps shield you against successful liability claims because to prove liability, you have to prove negligence. 

And negligence just means you didn’t do something you should have known to do, or you failed to do something you should have known to do. You didn’t do something you should have known to do. So, the more you do to address your foreseeable risks and make sure volunteers are operating safely, the better off you are. 

Tobi: Yeah, yeah due diligence. It’s great if you happen to have a lawsuit. I mean Let’s be clear Having insurance doesn’t prevent someone from suing you right people can sue anybody they want whatever they want no amount of insurance stops a lawsuit But what it does is once you get to court or even before court you say well actually, you know as you said we’ve done our due diligence. 

Here’s our documentation. Do you really want to go forward with this lawsuit? You know, and it puts you in a much better place than, well, I don’t know. We don’t know what we do around here about that.  

William: Right. And that’s one more reason why volunteers should not be included in a general liability policy, because let’s say that a volunteer did not follow your procedures and caused an accident. You’re going to be in an adversarial position with that volunteer and so therefore you need to have separate legal defense from what they have.  

Tobi: Right. 

William: Because your interests are different at that point.  

Tobi: Yeah. So, so we’ve got these, are there any other things that an organization needs to have? 

William: Well, now we can run down the nice to have coverages now that we’ve talked about the need to have.  

Tobi: All right, let’s do that, but you know what, let’s take a quick break and then we’re going to come right back. And let me read that, gang, the need to have coverages for organizations are general liability directors’ and officers’ liability, workers compensation, auto liability, including non-owned and hired coverage. 

And then we also talked about volunteer professional errors and omissions. We talked about volunteer accident insurance, and we talked about volunteer auto liability insurance. Did I get that right so far? 

William: Yes.  

Tobi: Awesome. Well, let’s take a quick break and we’re going to come back and talk about nice to have and maybe a few more tips from William about how to keep everybody safe. 

So, let’s take a pause for my conversation with William Henry about insurance for volunteers and nonprofit organizations. He’s been doing a really good job at that. We will be right back. 

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Tobi: Okay. We’re back with our conversation with William Henry about insurance for volunteers as well as insurance for your organizations. So, if you’ve got a leadership team that’s confused about insurance for your organization as a whole, insurance for volunteers. This is a great episode to refer to them, but let’s get into the neat, the nice to have now, William, what, what insurance is nice to have for organizations and when should people think about bringing those on? 

William: All right. Property, if you own or lease office space and you have computers, phones, furniture, other kinds of equipment, you should consider property insurance because it might be less costly than having to replace that equipment. The premium depends strictly on what you have and its value. Most people probably have property insurance at some level. 

Another type of coverage that’s nice to have is crime. We never think of employees or volunteers as being dishonest, but sometimes things do happen. And crime coverage makes the organization whole if there is a theft by a volunteer or a staff member. And it can also cover the assets of others like if you have property of your clients in your office. 

Coverage is fairly inexpensive, it starts at about 200. Cyber coverage, if you collect personal information, you have cyber risk exposure. We’ve all heard horror stories about that over the, in recent years. Information that’s confidential could be released accidentally, or it could be released by a disgruntled employee or a volunteer. 

Which is why you need to think carefully about who has what information. We had a blog on our website recently by Tony Goodreau of Better Impact, about basics for cyber security for a nonprofit. So, it pays the insurance expenses involved if there is a breach.  

Tobi: I know Tony. I think we’ve had Tony on the show before, I’ll link to that in our show notes, that blog post that’s on your website. 

William: Yes, it was three months ago. You should be able to find it easily under the blog tab ‘Professional liability’, we’ve talked a little bit about that. This is errors and omissions for professional services and the definition of those has expanded greatly over the past 10, 20, 30 years. So, organizations that have volunteers that are engaged in counseling or vocational training or staff, staff or volunteers doing any sort of specialized instruction or training should have professional liability coverage. Now, the policies are, they’re not standard, so it just varies strictly depending on what services are being provided. 

Tobi: I feel like that that type of errors and omissions Has really been evolving because I remember when I started my business about 15 years ago It was really hard to find small business, you know errors and omissions And professional liability and you had to go it was very convoluted process and you had to go around and like figure out Find some crazy person to help you. 

It isn’t common nowadays. There are so many people with small businesses and people were you know, with working online, there’s lots of entrepreneurialism. There’s just much more going on. It’s very common. In the entrepreneurial space anyway, to find this type of coverage, I have this type of coverage, you know, in case you give somebody information and you’re doing your due diligence as an expert, but for some reason you make a mistake, or the information has changed. 

William: And it’s not going to be covered in the general liability policy.  

Tobi: So, let’s go back to these professional services errors and omissions. I want to reiterate. Do you need two separate policies one for volunteers and or do you recommend two separate policies one for volunteers and one for Employees or just do you recommend just getting one that covers both? 

William: We do not offer professional liability coverage for volunteers. So, okay. If a volunteer is certified as an expert in whatever the field might be, and you engage them as an organization, I would require that volunteer to provide their own coverage.  

Tobi: Okay, so let’s say they were doing pro bono legal services, for example, they would have their own errors and omissions liability coverage. 

William: Typically, that’s going to be a retired attorney or someone who is doing it on a part time basis and they certainly will have errors and omissions insurance of their own. But again, you got, you must check and make sure.  

Tobi: Okay, great. What else is neat, nice to have?  

William: Umbrella coverage provides additional limits over your general liability. Your business auto policy and under workers compensation, there’s a component called employer liability that protects you in case the volunteer says, I’m not going to take my benefits. I’m going to sue you because this was your fault that I got hurt. So, you can buy umbrella coverage over that as well as the general liability and the business. Usually it’s in 1 million increments. Okay. And each additional million will be less expensive than the one before.  

Tobi: Okay. So, I think folks often get general liability and umbrella coverage, they get them conflated, they think they’re the same thing, but they’re not. Umbrella is adding, it’s supplemental, it’s adding on to what you already have. 

William: Yes. And, and I would say also, as an aside, for anyone who has a homeowner policy and a personal auto policy. I would highly recommend that you have a personal umbrella over those policies as well, so that you’re not going to be wiped out if someone holds you liable for injuring them. And the limits of your homeowner or your auto policy are insufficient. It’s the best bargain there is for an individual in insurance.  

Tobi: Oh, interesting. I didn’t know that. Good to know. Good to know. Are there any other nice to haves?  

William: That’s the end of my list. I will say I’ve got documents that I’m happy to provide your listeners if they contact me, which provides a little bit more detail about all these coverages we’ve been discussing. 

The need to have and the nice to have. And there’s other documents that, that’s specifically for nonprofits. Because as I mentioned in the beginning, most insurance companies and agents don’t understand nonprofits.  

Tobi: Yeah, so how would they get those documents from you? Email you?   

William: Just email me. And I’ll send them in PDF form by return email. william.henry@visvolunteers.com  

Tobi: And we’ll put this link in the show notes. That’s, that’s fantastic. So, gang, if you have questions about any of the things because, you know, insurance can be complicated if you’re not an expert at it, and I don’t think anybody who’s an agent or broker expects you to know all the ins and outs of insurance. 

What you want to do is find an agent or broker like William, and I will contact you, William, and ask, ask questions and get informed until you fully understand. It’s a lot of different papers. I think it’s important that we understand what we’re covered for, what you have and what you don’t have. 

Do you often review policies that folks already have in place? Did you do that? As well as talking to folks who need brand new coverage? 

William: Well, if they’re interested in what we would do in that case, if it’s the coverages we’ve been talking about, the general liability, we would refer those to our partners at SEMA / Acrisure which is our business administrator for the volunteer insurance policy. 

They’re a full-service property and casualty agency. So quite often our volunteer insurance customers need,  property and casualty insurance and we refer them to SEMA. Uh, which is licensed in every state. 

Tobi: Awesome. So, you can help people. Let me ask you a couple more questions before we finish up today, because I know people are thinking about this. We’ve done training on this in the past inside our volunteer pro community. And I think sometimes people believe, you know, when we’ve done training and talk about risk, sometimes people believe, well, you know, we don’t really need all this stuff because we, we have a Federal Volunteer Protection Act and that will cover liability and that’ll cover our volunteers. 

And, you know, and some states have their own good Samaritan laws that are pretty much verbatim of the Federal, Federal Volunteer Protection Act or are in, are applicable in various states. specific situations for very specific types of volunteers but what do you say to folks when they say well, We don’t need this because we’ve got the volunteer protection act to protect our volunteers  

William: Yeah, the federal volunteer protection act of 1997 and all the state laws that I’m aware of it Are modeled on it have two big gaping holes. 

One is that there’s no protection for acts of gross negligence. And if you’re a plaintiff’s attorney, you can turn gross negligence can be very elastic. So that’s one limitation of that so-called protection. The other is, as far as I’m aware, all these laws exclude actions involving a motor vehicle. 

So those are two limitations that everyone should be aware of. The other thing I’m asked all the time if I do a webinar, people will say, well, we have our volunteers sign a waiver of liability. That’s nice. Because it focuses the volunteer’s attention on the fact that bad things could happen. Many a, a waiver has been struck down in court. The judge will say this is skewed in favor of the organization. I’m going to let this lawsuit go forward. So, I would not rely on liability waivers at all.  

Tobi: Yeah, I mean, I think, too, for me, there’s a bit of an ethical dilemma when it comes to liability waivers, and this is just my point of view, but if you’re asking people from the community to come and help your organization achieve its mission, it feels a little bit like I don’t know, unethical to ask the volunteers who are, their work is benefiting your organization, to ask them to shoulder, even though it may or may not run, you know, work in court, to ask them up front to shoulder 100 percent of the liability. 

It just, for me, it just feels, I don’t know, it feels like an ethical question for me because in the end, the volunteer’s work is benefiting the organization. Certainly, it benefits the volunteers in terms of, you know, health and, you know, getting something on your resume if you’re a student or having, meeting new friends and all that. 

But in the end, the work really, primarily benefits the organization. So why shouldn’t the organization share in the liability with the volunteers? And I’m not against like shared liability because I think also It helps volunteers, especially with auto, there’s not really a way to do it without volunteers taking some of the liability, but the waiver for me, I always try to explain to people what it really means when you ask somebody to sign a waiver that basically sign, you’re asking them to sign their rights away as a volunteer in terms of liability. 

Now, like, as you said, in the end, the courts may say, well, you know what, that’s not fair or the volunteer didn’t know what they were signing. And therefore, we’re going to move forward with the lawsuit. So that’s just my perspective on it.  

William: What we’ve seen over the years, Tobi, for volunteer recruitment, it’s much more effective to, two things to say, we have this insurance for you and here’s how we’re going to prepare you to do your job safely. 

We have these training resources, and we want you to go through this first volunteer know they have risks, so if they if they see this environment of safety consciousness and resources that are going to help them do their jobs without anyone getting hurt, they’re much more likely to stick to that organization. 

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, it’s a sign of respect, right? That we’re going to, we’ve thought this through and professionalization, right? We have a professional organization. That protects folks. We’ve done our risk assessment. We’ve decided what we need to do to manage and mitigate risk and this is what we do. We’re a safety-first organization and this is how we go about it to make sure everybody’s safe I think that’s a real positive in terms of communications to prospective volunteers  

William: You know bring to bring up Susan Ellis a second time, she always used to say There should be no difference between your volunteers and your paid staff other than the pay. So, just as you hold your paid staff accountable for following your procedures, it should be the same with volunteers. It’s okay to fire a volunteer if they just refuse to follow the procedures you put in place that are designed to ensure their safety and everyone else’s. 

Tobi: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As we think about, we’ve got our coverages in place, we’ve trained our volunteers, we’ve got our documented standard operating procedures. We’ve got a level of supervision that is adequate for the role. We’ve collected any, for example, proof of auto insurance. What other things should an organization have in place to prepare themselves for a future claim? 

Just with the assumption that, yeah, probably sooner or later we will have a claim. Just so that they’re organized and prepared. What, is there anything you recommend to your customers or clients around that to make sure that they’re well organized for that potential claim?  

William: Be prepared to prove who, what, when, where, how. First, the insurance company has the right to ask for proof that the volunteer was working for you when this, whatever the incident is, happened. So, keeping good records of who was on duty is important. With liability claims, sometimes they take months to develop. You might just get a hint of a problem. 

Somebody might sue us for something a volunteer did. It’s important to go ahead and put your insurance company on notice at that time. For Don’t wait to see if it’s going to blow over. Don’t let the attorney on your board decide whether to report the claim. Because, the insurance companies have this word, timely. 

And they require that you report claims in a timely way, and you don’t want to be arguing with them over whether your claim was timely. So, if it turns out to be nothing, then you haven’t lost anything if a claim does develop later. You got your claim in on time. So, that’s very important.  

 Tobi: Yeah, I can imagine a couple of other things that would be super helpful as well one is you know, you talked about? Really understanding when people are on duty and off duty. I think If you have a volunteer management system or some type of system where people can log in and log out You That’s really helpful for showing, you know, that there’s proof positive this volunteer was on shift, whether they’re working from home, working off site, working at your organization, if you have and set a policy that people should log in and log out, that’s a primary reason why. 

Also to know who’s on shift, who’s around, who’s in the building, those kinds of things. But for me, documentation like that is important. So that you can show like, yeah, they were on duty. Here’s when they logged in. Here’s when they logged out.  

William: Yeah. And there are ways to do that. Better Impact is a partner of ours and they have volunteer management software. For transportation programs. Another partner of ours is Assisted Rides. That’s a web-based program. Drivers log in, log out when they’re transporting clients. So, it’s easy to keep track then of who was on duty.  

Tobi: Yeah, I also think it might be helpful for folks to create an incident report form and train volunteers on how and when to complete that form. And you know, when you talk about the who, what, when, where, how, I’d have that on the form, right? Like, what happened? And then train volunteers on the most minimal, you know, that’s out of the ordinary to the most, the things that you would obviously say, okay, this person fell and broke their arm, we’re going to do an incident report. 

But sometimes it’s something small that may develop into something bigger later. So maybe it’s an incident where there was a, you know, a conflict or an argument that broke out. It doesn’t always have to be like someone’s egregiousness, like personal bodily injury, but I think incident reports are also a way to capture some of that information. 

And I know it adds, you know, gang, we’re in the people business, not the paperwork business. I mean, we ought to do people over paperwork, but there are times where in these types of situations, it’s going to be hard. And, and, um, I think too, if there’s, if there’s an incident that you think ultimately might end up, uh, resulting in a claim, I would take that incident report and interview everybody who was part of that incident, make sure I have additional backup info. 

William: Yes. Start building a file and don’t leave it up to the volunteer. Just tell the volunteer that if there ever is an incident, just like you’ve been describing, report it right away to their supervisor, and they’ll let the supervisor take it from there. This is how the chain of command should work, and the volunteer supervisor is going to, whoever they report to, is going to know about it, so that nobody gets blindsided six months down the road.  

Tobi: Yeah. So, this has been helpful. And gang, I hope you as listeners are finding a lot of value. Maybe it’s making you realize things that are, are areas of vulnerability for your organization. I’m hoping. You, maybe you’ll want to listen to this again and pull out a piece of paper. 

I should have mentioned that in the beginning, because I was taking notes like crazy that you want to take some notes and start asking questions and start really getting a good understanding about how your volunteers are covered right now and how you might want to have them covered in the future. 

William, is there anything I didn’t ask today that you feel like, you know what, people need to know this or need to think about this when it comes to insurance for volunteers?  

  

William: I would just say that I’m so happy that volunteers are coming back to in person assignments. I know there were a lot of innovations that were developed during COVID, but for the volunteers who have person to person contact with those that they’re serving, there’s just nothing like being there. And I’m just so happy that that. Is finally coming back. We’re getting back to normal. 

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely I know and we need that we found that you know Human beings actually need to be around each other even the introverts amongst us need to be around people once in a while This has been a fantastic conversation I really appreciate you spending your time today helping educate the audience and myself about the ins and outs of insurance especially insurance for volunteers  

William: And let me just say, Tobi, that I want to thank everybody who’s listening for what you do in your communities. I admire all of you. Please consider me to be a resource if I ever can be. And thank you for letting me just share some thoughts about a subject that most people would rather avoid.  

Tobi: Yeah. That’s true. We always, we don’t want to think about it until the end. One last question as we wrap up, what are you most excited about in the year ahead? 

William: Oh, just getting back to normal, I would say, and letting volunteers do all the full gamut of responsibilities and tasks and opportunities that they signed on for.  

Tobi: Absolutely. Couldn’t have said it better. So, gang, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate you, all of you. Don’t hesitate to reach out to William. 

You can reach him at william.henry@visvolunteers.com I’ll also link to Assisted Rides and Better Impact as well as Tony Goodreau’s blog on cybersecurity so you can get, as well as the VIS Volunteers website, so you have all the resources you need to dig in a little bit more. 

I’m sure that William is not going to have any issues with you asking any question whatsoever, no matter how basic, do not be shy. We need to do this as due diligence as professionals that are leading people in our organizations. So, I want to thank you as well. And we will be here at the same time, same place next week on The Volunteer Nation. If you know anybody who could benefit from this particular episode, please share it with them and I will see you next week here on The Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.