When you're starting a non-profit do you need insurance? The short answer is yes! But what kind
of insurance do you need if you're starting out as a non-profit and as you grow as a non-profit?
That is what i'm going to cover in this video. And by the way this video topic was requested
suggested by one of my subscribers Uh Momz Lyfe so thank you so much for that suggestion.
Welcome or welcome back to my channel! My name is Amber Melanie Smith. I'm a non-profit founder
and executive director and i make these videos here on YouTube all about starting a non-profit,
creating a social impact through other types of organizations and activities also. So i hope that
you find this video helpful and useful as you are on your own social impact journey don't forget to
give this video a like and subscribe to my channel for more content like this. I also have a website
called FoundertoFullTime.com for those of you who are in the process of or desiring to start a
non-profit i've got some online trainings you can check out there. So i hope that you like and find
this video useful, and let's get into it. okay so i know that insurance is probably not one of
those things you even want to have to think about when you're in the process of starting or growing
a nonprofit organization i know that i personally would much rather be spending my time and energy
and attention on other things like fundraising or our programs or reaching new people etc however
however non-profits face a great deal of risk and a lot of the things that they do especially true
when your organization is you know working in specific issue areas might cover even
more risks so it's really important to have the right infrastructure and a strong infrastructure
strong protections in place to protect your organization from some of the things that could
happen in the big world out there i do not mean to sound like a sales person i am not an insurance
salesperson but i can say that the thought of something bad happening to the organization
that i worked so hard to build up and grow and make an impact through gives me nightmares so
i would much rather personally have some coverage in place to protect us if something goes wrong so
first i'm going to go through some of the types of insurance that you might need or expect to get as
a non-profit and then i'm going to talk a little bit more about the costs you can expect to incur
for these types of insurance and where to find these types of insurance you might be surprised
how many types of insurance exist for non-profits and you might need for your nonprofit i've broken
these insurance types into two sections the first is types of insurance that you would need for
your organization in general and the second is types of insurance that you might need or want
for the employees of your organization so let's do part one first which is types of insurance
for the organization overall so the first type of insurance i'll talk about is liability insurance
and this is just general liability insurance that would cover your organization against
claims of negligent conduct by the non-profit its employees board members volunteers or other agents
now each insurance package is going to be a little bit different but in general this would
cover your organization against cases of things like accidental injury to someone or accidental
property damage during one of your nonprofits activities or accidental copyright infringement
etc the second type of insurance that is important to know about is called directors and officers
insurance this is a specific type of insurance meant to cover your board members or those who
are considered officers of your organization could include your executive director from
having to accept some personal liability if something goes wrong with the organization now
in the united states many laws protect an organization uh and its people from
this liability already but it's there's always some you know rare cases where that might not be
true so it's important to have this extra layer of protection and i even know of some people
who refuse to sit on any non-profit board at all unless the organization has this type of
insurance coverage so really will make your board members feel safe in their role the third type of
insurance is called volunteer accident insurance this is designed if your organization works with
a lot of volunteers or works with volunteers regularly this is designed to help cover
medical expenses or costs associated with a volunteer incurring an injury while serving
with your organization it's kind of like workers comp except that's for paid employees and this
is for volunteers next is property insurance now this obviously is only applicable if your
organization owns uh significant property in this case i'm talking about like a building
if you own or rent a building you might need to have this property insurance and finally in
some of the most common types you might have a business auto insurance and of course this
relates to if your organization owns uh perhaps a truck to deliver food or goods or a van or
you know normal-sized vehicles for other purposes if your organization owns it you're going to
need the insurance for those vehicles too all right now let's get into the next part part two
in which i'm going to talk a little bit more about a couple of common types of insurance specific to
the employees of your organization the first is workers compensation this is of course to cover
your your employees of the organization in the event of injury on the job and it's important
to note that in many cases workers compensation is something that's going to be required by the laws
of your region the second type is employee health insurance so just like a private or for-profit
company non-profits can and in my opinion should offer uh health insurance benefits to their paid
staff this is a great benefit that you can offer whether you decide as an organization that you can
afford to only cover a part of it or all of it or whatever works for you helping in any way i know
is a great benefit to attract and retain employees and the third type is disability insurance and
that could be short-term or long-term disability insurance this is to help cover a portion of an
employee's income in the event that illness or injury causes them to not be able to do their work
for some designated period of time this is one of those things that again is a really great benefit
to be able to offer employees makes them feel safe and protected in their work with the organization
and is something that you can look into as a type of insurance when you have a paid employees
now let's talk about the costs of all this insurance now each one of the ones that i listed
could cost your organization anywhere from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars
per year so you definitely want to be budgeting for these insurance types in advance if you can
and make sure that you are raising those funds to cover these important bits of coverage now of
course your specific quote that you'll get from uh insurance provider is going to vary based on
a couple of different factors one of which is the size of your organization and by that i mean
how many employees you have so obviously for example if you're talking about employee health
insurance or disability insurance the price goes up based on the number of employees you have and
the other aspect could be your organization budget size and the complexity of your organization's
activities and then of course the particular risks associated with your organization's mission and
activities you're undertaking day-to-day obviously you know if a non-profit is uh participating
in activities regularly that are in a physically demanding or environmentally hazardous environment
those are going to include more risks in some aspects of the work non-profits with larger
buildings or more vehicles will pay more for those types of insurance etc you get the idea now let's
talk about where to find this insurance so now that you know the basics of how all this works and
by the way there are many more types of insurance i didn't cover here but these are just the most
common ones you might find across many non-profits so where do you find this type of insurance or
these types of insurance so there are many different types of insurance carriers who
might offer these types of insurance you can do a simple internet search to discover them in
your local area you might also consider going through an entity like a non-profit insurance
broker who may be able to through the power of collective bargaining or whatever um identify
some cost savings for your organization um to get all of these types of insurance an example of
one of these might be the nonprofit insurance alliance all right so please please do share
in the comments if you found this type of topic helpful to you as you are doing your great works
i'd love to hear from you um i know like i said before personally insurance is kind of one of
those daunting topics i really don't want to have to think about but i imagine several of you feel
the same so i hope that this demystifies some of that for you if you have a unique non-profit
mission and you are um currently using a rare type of insurance we didn't cover here
in this video today i'd i'd be curious to learn more about that so leave that in the comments too
as i mentioned before if you are starting a non-profit or working on developing you know your
fundraising initiatives for a growing non-profit check out my website FounderToFullTime.com, I
do have some trainings and resources on there for you i do a newsletter about once a month with some
additional resources for non-profit leaders and other types of change makers you can subscribe to
that there's the link in the description as well and of course you can opt out any time you'd like
finally i do have a Facebook group called Change the World or Bust - we've got a couple thousand
folks in there from literally all over the world, so it's pretty amazing, of people sharing their
journeys of trying to make an impact and getting encouragement, tips from others. So hope you can
join me there too! Once again i'm Amber Melanie Smith and i hope that you found this video
helpful! Don't forget to like it and subscribe to my channel, and i hope to see you next time. Bye!