Non-Profit Organizations are some of our favorite clients!

Do you have experience with multi-state, multi-location social service agencies?

Absolutely!  We have been insuring social service agencies for over 40 years! Whether they need coverage for their offices, buildings, services, residential or treatment locations we can help! Not for profit entities need special insurance coverage to meet their unique situations and the services they offer. They often provide myriad services in many locations ranging from their offices to their treatment or program facilities to off site or remote services. Our experience means we ask questions to uncover the areas in which insurance is needed and to assist in helping to create an insurance program that can include not only general liability but social service professional liability, improper sexual conduct coverage and automobile liability, as well as directors and officers coverage and employment practices coverage among others.

What if our operations include treatment of minors or seniors?

Bring them on! Youth and senior services are a large part of the non-profit sector and we want to help them find a robust insurance program as well as stay in compliance with their requirement for background checks. One of the insurance carriers we represent offers enrollment in a discounted background check program as a resource to their clients – let us see if you qualify for insurance coverage with this fabulous insurance carrier then learn how you can cut your costs for background checks and continue to feel confident in employing those professionals who are assisting your most vulnerable clients.

Some of our employees drive our agency owned vehicles – how do we know they are eligible to drive our private passenger cars?

We strongly suggest you set up a “driver pull program” so YOU, the non-profit, are notified of a change in the driving record of your employees. Do you have a stellar employee whose driving record is less than ideal? No problem! As long as the management of your agency feels the employee should continue to drive on your behalf and the driving record of the employee is not unreasonably detrimental, our insurance carriers will most likely allow you, the insured, to continue to allow that employee to drive. Many insurance carriers won’t allow the employer the opportunity to make that decision and will make it for them by excluding a “problem driver” from coverage. Further risk management tools may be available to you such as driver safety awareness programs as well.

We are going to grow this year and will take on some employees for the first time who will work in our office. How do we protect ourselves if we are concerned about being sued for something like harassment by an employee?

First, be sure you work with a competent HR consultant and attorney to set up your procedures, manuals, training, etc. so you protect yourself as best you can before you hire anyone. Then, purchase a robust employment practices liability insurance policy. This type of policy can potentially protect you from claims such as harassment, wrongful termination or hostile work environment. Remember, most policies like this don’t cover claims for wage and hour such as you not paying your employees properly for overtime or when they miss a break or meal time. So, we go back to our opening statement on this topic; make sure you have excellent procedures in place to track your employees hours and pay them their correct pay to start! A little known added benefit to an employment practices policy:  if you purchase this type of policy,  you are usually provided with a toll free phone number to call to obtain assistance from a qualified employment professional if you have a question about how to handle an employee issue. This initial consultation is usually free and the consultation is often required as a condition in your policy.

We oversee a program that includes a clinic. Will our insurance cover us if we review medications with our clients?

Many treatment programs must know and consider medications taken by clients as part of their successful treatment. It is important to know and understand where your policy starts and stops coverage when it comes to medications. Depending on your agency’s specific situation, you may even need medical malpractice coverage, particularly if you administer or prescribe medications. We want to work with you to make that determination.

We are entering into a contract with our local county that has stringent insurance requirements, some of which we don’t understand. How can you help us with this?

We LOVE to have you send your contracts to us! Ideally, we should review these BEFORE you sign them. It is important for us to know the insurance requirements you are expected to meet and we want you to know if your insurance actually complies with the requirements (and possibly more importantly where it does not) so you can determine how best to move forward. If you are able to negotiate the contract and provide clear explanations as to why a certain requirement cannot be met or will be very expensive to meet, you may be able to have the contract amended. But this can only occur before the contract is signed. The same goes for your lease – let us review it BEFORE you sign it! We have helped many clients save hundreds and even thousands of dollars by negotiating the insurance requirements in their lease before moving in.

We no longer have a physical office. Our executive director and clerical people work remotely. How do we obtain insurance for our meetings and activities?

General Liability insurance does not have to necessarily be location specific. We can tailor an insurance program to meet your specific needs to cover the programs you offer, your fundraisers and meetings without requiring you to have a physical location. All we need to know is the general area in which you offer services to give us an idea of your geographic location.

What insurance do we REALLY need as a small, start up Non-Profit entity?

A primary consideration is what your by-laws and articles of incorporation say you should purchase for insurance.  We hope you worked with an attorney to properly set up your non-profit organization (if not we know of some GREAT people you should work with!) and most likely your articles of incorporation address your insurance requirements. We want to assist you to comply with those requirements so let’s start there. Then we move onto asking about what you do and the services you offer to determine if there are further needs. If you have a lease, we need to look at those insurance requirements. Do you have a contract that contains insurance requirements? This is another area that should be considered. At a bare minimum, a non-profit needs both general liability and directors and officers coverage in our opinion.

How do we protect ourselves against a cyber attack such as Ransomware?

Buy a cyber insurance policy!!! Have a GREAT IT team! Constantly train anyone who has access to your website or uses your email addresses on cyber safety! A good cyber insurance policy is multifaceted to protect you for issues that arise in the event of a cyber attack and can include coverage for things like incident response costs, legal and regulatory costs, security and forensic costs, crisis communication costs, breach management, funds transfer fraud, extortion, identity theft and others but should include coverage for the loss of business income as a result of these issues. If you use a smart phone, tablet or computer, you are at risk of some sort of cyber attack.

We don’t currently carry general liability insurance but have an annual fundraiser for which we buy a “special event” policy each year. Can you assist us with that need?

If you have more than 1 special event a year, you will most likely spend at least half of the annual minimum premium that you would pay for a full year policy for the special event policy alone. Why not consider protection for the full year to provide coverage for example, your meeting places? It may be the best bang for your buck! AND will offer you much broader protection at the same time.

Do you have more questions? Please give us a call – we truly enjoy our relationships with our non profit clients and are happy to answer your specific questions