Clubs Can Purchase More Peace of Mind with Optional Club Insurance BY APRIL GASSLER, DISTRICT RISK MANAGER
As you may know, part of your annual dues to Kiwanis International provides insurance to every Kiwanis Club and every Kiwanis Family Member. The insurance coverage funded by a portion of your dues includes general liability insurance, as well as directors’ & officers’ insurance for the boards of Kiwanis Clubs and Kiwanis Foundations. While those insurance programs are important and do cover most of the risks Kiwanis clubs and their members face, there are some other risks we may face as Kiwanians that are not covered by those two insurance programs. Rest assured, Kiwanis International has negotiated optional club insurance programs to help mitigate certain additional risks that Kiwanis clubs may face. The first optional insurance program is Club Accident Insurance. If you have been to one of my Risk Management presentations, you have probably heard me explain that the Kiwanis “general liability” insurance applies when someone outside of Kiwanis sues Kiwanis (including an individual Kiwanis Club or Kiwanian) claiming that Kiwanis is liable for an injury they suffered. I also explained that if a Kiwanian or SLP member is injured during a Kiwanis event, the Kiwanis liability insurance does not apply in that situation. That being said, the optional Club Accident Insurance would apply where a Kiwanian or SLP member is injured at an official club event. Coverage is available for as low as $3 per member and can be purchased to protect SLP members as well as Kiwanians.
The second optional insurance program is Club Crime Insurance. Club crime insurance helps mitigate many financial risks a Kiwanis club may face, including embezzlement of funds, check forgery, funds lost in transit, robbery/burglary, and, most importantly, “social engineering fraud.” Social engineering fraud is a broad term that refers to scams used by criminals to deceive and/ or manipulate victims into sharing confidential information and/or sending funds in error. Criminals may pose as IRS agents, credit card companies, banks, vendors, or other charitable organizations when contacting victims by telephone, email, and/or text message. They exploit a person’s trust to learn banking details, passwords, or other sensitive data, or trick the victim into sending funds to the criminal. Kiwanis clubs are particularly attractive to these criminals because few clubs operate their own email systems and thus cannot control spam filters that might block their members’ receipt of such malicious emails. In addition, few clubs offer cybersecurity training that would help their members identify potentially fraudulent emails.
Finally, as Kiwanians, we have a tendency to assume that others share our altruistic intentions and are not always as suspicious as we maybe should be. Sadly, these criminals do not care who they steal from or what the originally intended use was for their ill-gotten gains. But your club can protect itself from the consequences of social engineering fraud and other financial risks by purchasing the optional Club Crime Insurance for as little as $145 per year. Applications and payments for the optional Club Accident Insurance and/or Club Crime Insurance are due by October 31, 2021. For application forms and more information about these optional coverages, please review the Optional Club Insurance Guide available at: https://www.kiwanis.org/ clubs/member-resources/training/ risk-management. For questions, please call Kiwanis International’s insurance broker, Nathan Peterman, of Hylant, at 1-800-678-0361, or contact your District Risk Manager.
The Capital Kiwanian
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