Re: [Organizers] levels of liability protection

Brian wrote: Queen City Contras (Burlington, Vermont), is considering paying a lawyer for some details on this matter.  Here's what I have gathered so far: I'm the chairman of the board of Bay Area Country Dance Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in the San Francisco Bay area. We have that. (We used to insure through the Folkdance Federation, then through CDSS, and now we go through a policy that was pretty much designed for karate schools. That covers our several different display dance (border, sword, morris) teams pretty well while still working for public dances and not being limited to covering members. members. That happened about 1982, although I think it was done primarily to provide nonprofit cover for the Mendocino Woodlands dance camps (which have now all moved away from the Mendocino Woodlands, but continue in new venues). directors, etc.) We looked into having the organization pay for that some years ago and found it stunningly expensive at that time. Our directors (including me) who are worried about this can get fairly inexpensive riders on their homeowner's coverage to address this. "volunteer," who is legally an employee because she/he is compensated by receiving free/reduced admission, etc.). As far as I know we've never even considered doing this. I would guess that it would not be cheap. For a different organization which has not incorporated, we had a chat with a lawyer in the early 1990s. He thought it wasn't worth our while to incorporate for purposes of liability protection, because if we were seriously negligent, it would be possible to "pierce the corporate veil" and come after us individually. The best protection against liability for negligence, he advised us, was _not to be negligent_, and to make sure we did our best to operate in a safe manner. (So we do, but I didn't find that entirely comfortable. I'm the house caller for this other organization, and I've carried caller's insurance for years.) -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================