Insurance Options for Youth Camps

Working with children and teens can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also bring a lot of risk. Whether you’re running a themed camp, summer camp or sports camp, accidents are not only likely, but expected. Outdoor activities can lead to sprains, tears, breaks and other injuries. Before opening your summer camp’s doors to enthusiastic children, it’s important that your youth camp has the right type of insurance to handle any accident that may occur.

General Liability

General liability is a basic type of insurance that every business and individual should have. Although youth camps aren’t always technically businesses, this insurance can help reduce claims against the camp. General liability insurance covers third-party bodily injury and property damage that occurs on the camp’s property. It can help with medical costs for the victim as well as legal fees, should the victim decide to sue.

Accident Insurance

Accident insurance also covers bodily injury, but this covers more extreme cases. If your camp offers a lot of physical activity, such as contact sports, accident insurance can cover medical bills for a participant that is injured. This insurance can provide compensation for emergency medical services (such as an ambulance, first aid, disability and more.

This coverage has limits on the type of activities it covers, however. Certain high-risk activities and sports may not be covered, such as gymnastics. Accident insurance does cover sports such as baseball, basketball, ice hockey and skating, field hockey, soccer, softball, martial arts, volleyball and tennis. Be sure to ask insurance agencies about their excluded activities to make sure your camp can be covered with accident insurance.

Directors and Officers Insurance

Youth camps typically have a board made up of volunteers or officers who are in charge of planning and operating the camp. While acting as members of the board, many volunteers and officers face liability risks due to their actions while overseeing the youth camp. Directors and officers insurance protects these members from lawsuits regarding their activities on the board.

Sexual Misconduct Coverage

Parents are protective of their children by human nature, but also for good reason. When sending their children off to camp, parents can’t help but imagine every possible bad scenario. It doesn’t help that a large amount of sexual misconduct on children comes from coaches and teachers. While you organize your camp to employ only those you trust, it’s crucial to be careful and have an extra safety net in case a file is claimed against one of the camp’s volunteers or coaches.

Crime Insurance

Unfortunately, even the most trusted volunteers can make poor choices. Crime insurance covers the youth camp if one of the employees or volunteers chooses to steal from the camp’s funds. This includes acts of embezzling and fraud.

Equipment and Auto Insurance

In most youth camps, volunteers use their own vehicles to transport camp participants and equipment. If an accident occurs while they’re traveling for the camp, personal auto insurance may not cover them. In turn, they may turn to the camp for compensation. Hired and non-owned auto insurance is a type of auto insurance policy that covers vehicles hired or borrowed by the youth camp. This can include hired buses, as well.

Equipment coverage is also crucial to cover any sports equipment the youth camp may need from physical damage such as fire, wind, hail, lightning, theft and vandalism.

Each youth camp is different and has different needs. Carefully consider the unique insurance needs of your youth camp to make sure every volunteer, officer and participant are covered so they can focus on having fun!