Volunteering

upgrade your insurance! ours covers volunteers.
why should anyone volunteer wtih that kind of crap required?

Are we talking about volunteer directors? Volunteer officers (like the treasurer)? Volunteers doing handyperson work?

The association's covenants and typically state law typically required the HOA to indemnify the directors and officers, assuming there is no //willful// misconduct (amounting to a crime, from my reading over the years).

The courts do not like to hold directors and officers personally liable. This is because doing so would deter people from volunteering.

The Federal Volunteer Protection Act also offers some protection to those volunteering for a non-profit corporation.

Is this a condominium?

Our attorney recommended requiring signed "hold harmless" agreements from volunteers *even if the association is carrying enough insurance to cover such things".

Reason: if the association does not have enough insurance to cover a settlement, *the rest will be passed on to the homeowners*. It seems reasonable that this should be passed to the person who caused the accident or damage, and not to people who had nothing to do with it. Since settlements have been rising and some of them are frankly crazy. Last I heard, $2 million pretty normal, although the details matter.

I'll avoid re-posting my usual shtick about why using volunteers can be a bad idea, other than to say that volunteers should not be doing physical labor or handling chemicals. There's a common notion floating around that HOAs shouldn't have to pay for services, and it can lead to unpleasant surprises.

Anyone who isn't comfortable signing an agreement shouldn't sign it.

For liability reasons, I think conventional legal wisdom is that the board should make use of volunteers only for very basic, unskilled labor. Sometimes covenants require the use of licensed contractors. Sometimes they require bonding and other insurance for certain work. Sometimes the condo's insurer would reject a claim if there's //any chance// the claim was a result of a volunteer's handyperson work.

I do not think states can opt out of the application of the Volunteer Protection Act. The essence of the Act is:
"No volunteer of a nonprofit organization or governmental entity shall be liable for harm caused by an act or omission of the volunteer on behalf of the organization or entity."

Lots of us say the hell with the law, and do all manner of handyperson work for our HOAs or condo association. Maybe this is not prudent.

I do not think I have ever read of a volunteer doing handyperson type work being sued.

To add to Cathy: Even with "unskilled" work, volunteers should not be climbing ladders, using power tools, messing with electricity (I'm not talking changing a light bulb) and motors and engines. Too much risk to the HOA if the handyman is injured.

Our condo HOA insurance, for example, does cover volunteer committee members, but does not permit them to do any of the above. As a director, you can imagine my horror rounding a corner in our lobby just in time to see an, um, older Social Committee volunteer on a tall ladder fall INTO a Christmas tree he was "helping" decorate while our bldg. engineer was on his break. both he & the tree were unhurt.

I found out a few years ago that our board, which at the time was big on using volunteers, had a 70-year-old owner shoveling snow (*). The board crowed about this in the next newsletter. In another newsletter they described how some young children also participated in yard work. It's like they wanted to get sued... /smh

(* Lawyer's advice: do NOT use volunteers for snow removal, not even young healthy ones. We hear stories all the time about guys having heart attacks while shoveling snow. If you think an injury claim is bad, wait 'til someone dies.)

Insuring volunteers doesn't just involve workers comp. Regardless of all of the laws and fairness and whatnot, when things go sideways and somebody wants to sue, they're going to go after whoever they think has the bug bucks. This usually means the association, and the association has to protect itself accordingly. The board doesn't get to decide when a lawsuit is frivolous - that's up to the courts, so the association has to lawyer up and pay up, which may involve use of insurance funds.

The association's standard liability coverage generally does not cover volunteer workers, which is why workers comp or equivalent is recommended and why boards require hired professionals to be insured/licensed/etc.

This is why I state "volunteers aren't free" in my usual speech about the risks of using them - the association has to buy additional insurance over and above what they currently have, so it's an added expense that they probably haven't budgeted for.

Also see:

Volunteers and Liability: An Overview of Legal Protections and Municipal Exposure by an attorney and posted on the New Hampshire Municipal Association web site.