Vehicle Safety Concerns: Don’t Put Your Nonprofit in a Risky Position
If your nonprofit organization uses motor vehicles to transport clients, goods or services, you may be putting your organization at risk without even realizing it. For example, a food bank uses vans to transport meals from its building to a soup kitchen. And during the transport, the staff member operating the vehicle gets into an accident. Depending on what type of insurance the nonprofit has, it may be covered. But the nonprofit might be vulnerable to liabilities without even knowing it.
Whether nonprofits use their own vehicles or use volunteers who are driving their own vehicles, it’s better to be prepared for when accidents happen — because it’s likely they will. And the truth is, an incident that involves a vehicle owned by your organization can threaten your mission.
For these reasons, it’s important for your organization to understand how to take safety measures for when accidents happen. A few best practices include having written policies/procedures in place, using road tests, having formal documented driver training, maintaining an authorized drivers list, including specific language in job descriptions, etc.
Additionally, no matter what insurance carrier your organization uses, one of the smartest ways to understand how to best prepare when things happen, what preventative measures to take and what actions to take once an accident does occur is to have a detailed conversation with your insurance carrier. It handles these types of cases on a daily basis and will have the insights you will need to help protect your organization.
If you’re interested in learning more from fleet management experts, NonProfit PRO is hosting a free, interactive webinar on August 11 at 2 p.m. EST. DeAnna Ferguson, VP of government and community affairs at Volunteers of America Southeast; Paul Siragusa, VP of commercial lines underwriting at Philadelphia Insurance Companies; and Andrew Shockey, AVP of risk management services at Philadelphia Insurance Companies, will be sharing what fleet management is and why your nonprofit should be concerned with it; what liabilities, costs and safety concerns should be top of mind for nonprofits that operate fleet vehicles; what preventative steps to take to protect your nonprofit from these risks and liabilities; and much more.
Nhu is a content strategist with over a decade of experience improving the way social good brands engage and build connections through human-first storytelling. She currently leads NTB Content, a content marketing agency with a niche in digital fundraising and nonprofit tech.
