Manual: Volunteer Accident Insurance Overview

Covenant Partners should be familiar with our volunteer accident insurance policy.  With any organizational activity, there is always the possibility that a participant may suffer an injury.  

This accident insurance serves as a secondary insurance (also known as an excess plan) paying for deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance responsibilities after the participant’s own medical insurance pays a claim.  For anyone on the jobsite that does not have medical insurance, the accident insurance will serve as the primary coverage up to the policy limits.

This volunteer insurance policy will not cover sickness or disease (for example: COVID 19, food poisoning or dehydration). 

Our experience has been that in addition to asking the volunteers to sign a waiver release form, volunteer accident insurance has been the front line of defense minimizing the risk of lawsuits against the non-profit.  But unfortunately there are no fool-proof strategies to prevent any and all law suits against the organization.

The Philadelphia Insurance Companies’ volunteer insurance is provided to our Covenant Partners through our Americus home office.  All Covenant Partner leadership should become familiar with the policy, its benefits, exclusions and limitations.   

The premium charge for this coverage is $2.39/volunteer, which covers that volunteer for all of their volunteer activity through the policy year, August 15, 2020 to August 14, 2021.

  • The annual premium (based on an estimate of volunteers we expect to have across the country), is paid by the Americus home office.  Accordingly, CP premium payments will be made to us here in Americus to reimburse that deposit.
  • An advantage of this program is its simplicity.  The only requirement of a CP is to keep track of the number of individual volunteers that serve with you.  This should be a simple matter of reviewing your volunteer log or counting the number of waivers that you collect.  As the $2.39 premium covers a volunteer for all engagements during the year.  CP’s will want to make sure that there are no duplicate entries on your log or multiple waivers collected.
  • If you’re not keeping a log, you probably should be. A simple log template using Excel is posted.  One advantage of this format is that you can sort the log by last name when you file your report to quickly identify any duplicates.
  • There is no specific timetable for reporting.  If you’re using a large number of volunteers for an event, you might want to report monthly.  We’d recommend that you report at least quarterly.
  • Reporting is easy:  simply send a note with the period you are reporting, the number of individual volunteers, and your check payable to The Fuller Center for Housing in an amount equal to the number of volunteers times $2.39.

Don’t hesitate to contact our office with any questions: Stacey (sdriggers@fullercenter.org) or Cathy (csmith@fullercenter.org) or call the office—229-924-2900.

Search for a topic in the manual:

Helpful hint: If you want to search for a specific topic in the Operations Manual, search for the word “manual” followed by a “+” sign and then a specific term. For example, if you want to know more about hammers, you would search for “manual+hammers”.

Operations manual index