SE Uplift knows that community work often can’t happen unless insurance is available!
SE Uplift understands that insurance can be a barrier to great work happening in the community. Therefore, we strive to make this complicated issue as easy and accessible as possible. SE Uplift provides directors & officers and general liability insurance coverage for most of our neighborhood associations.
Who is Covered?
Community Groups who Partner with an Insured Group
SE Uplift is not able to extend our General Liability coverage to non-neighborhood associations or groups we don’t fiscally sponsor (even if that happened in past years). However, groups can partner with a covered Neighborhood Association or fiscal sponsor to co-host your event or project. If you are successful in co-hosting their insurance will be available to your project of event.
*Please provide 4 weeks to make this happen, Neighborhood Association only meet once per month and may need to approve a co-hosting relationship as well as request insurance coverage for the added activity (which may not be covered under their standard coverage).
Neighborhood Associations
SE Uplift is able to extend our General Liability and Directors and Officers Insurance coverage to Neighborhood Associations in our Coalition in most situations. These groups are covered for traditional activities and events such as meetings, clean-ups, picnics, and art walks, garage sales, and more. Because Neighborhood Associations are covered, they are encourage to partner with other neighbors or community groups to extend their coverage to those groups.
*Neighborhood Associations need to provide a list of anticipated events and activities to SE Uplift in May to ensure events are covered for the following year. Large events may incur additional costs that may be passed onto the Neighborhood Association.
What is Covered?
Banners & Projects
Community Meetings & Events
Directors & Officers
SE Uplift’s liability insurance is required when hanging street banners either for an event or permanently as a neighborhood identifier. In order to hang banners, applicants must acquire a permit through the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and the utility company where the banners will be hung. We have created a banner permit toolkit to help you navigate the permitting process for banners and also included PBOT’s Cross Street Banner Application Instructions and PGE’s permit instructions and application
SE Uplift’s standard general liability coverage for Neighborhood Associations covers low risk events, meetings and community activities. Fiscally sponsored projects are covered for the project scope included in their agreement.
If you’re a Neighborhood Association, or want to partner with a Neighborhood Association on a large event that may fall outside of the standard coverage – for example, your event is going to have over 300 participants, involve music, alcohol, or other high risk activities, it likely needs to be added to our policy as a special event. Please submit SE Uplift’s special events questionnaire | special events with liquor questionnaire to the Executive Director 2-4 weeks before the event.
If you are a fiscally sponsored (FS) group by SE Uplift and would like insurance coverage for an upcoming event outside of the original scope of your FS Agreement, you must connect with the Fiscal Sponsorship Manger to ensure you have coverage. If you do not, you need to give yourself 4 weeks to apply for coverage through SE Uplift.
The second type of insurance coverage that SE Uplift provides is Directors and Officers insurance for all SE Uplift and Neighborhood Association board members. All incorporated nonprofits are protected from law suits as long as their complying with their mission and bylaws, however there is always the possibility that a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit may be filed against your organization. Federal and State SLAPP Suit laws protect you, acting within your volunteer capacity, from being sued in these instances, however you will have to hire an attorney and pay associated fees to prove the wrongful suit. The Directors and Officers insurance that SE Uplift carries provides board members with the funds necessary to prove the suit falls under the SLAPP suit protections.
Certificates of Insurance
While groups want to be sure their events and activities are covered in the event of a loss or accident, some events and activities require proof of commercial general liability (GL) insurance. This proof comes in the form of a Certificate of Insurance. Most often these are required for events and activities located on City-owned property like parks or in the road right-of-way or private property like churches or schools.
Please complete SE Uplift’s special events questionnaire | special events with liquor questionnaire and provide it to the Executive Director at least 2 weeks to get the certificate from our provider. It can take anywhere from 2-15 days to get a certificate depending on a number of factors.
If you are applying for other permits – through parks or Portland Bureau of Transportation, we recommend that you submit this application at least 1 month prior to the event so that the required insurance documentation can be provided with your permit. For your reference, we have provided the links to commonly needed event permits for the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R).
Acknowledgment of SE Uplift
Groups receiving insurance, funds, support or additional resources from SE Uplift to support a project, activities, or event are required to place the SE Uplift logo and Office of Community and Civic Life on all printed and web-based materials associated with the project, activities, or event including, but not limited to, public announcements, media releases, newsletters, email announcements, event flyers and posters, event programs, annual reports, website pages, on-site signage, and social media announcements.
For press releases, newspaper articles, curtain speeches, and other applications where logos are not applicable, or if space and format do not permit the use of the SE Uplift logo, SE Uplift support should be acknowledged using the following statement, “[name of project] is made possible in part through funding from the City of Portland Office of Community & Civic Life and SE Uplift Neighborhood Coalition.”
Insurance FAQs
General Liability has historically covered NA-hosted or co-hosted meetings, national night out events, picnics, garage sales, clean ups, littler pick-up and other small scale community events under 500 people (e.g. Harvest Celebration). For now, these types of activates are still common and are covered.
The NA would need to host the event for it to be covered. If it is a large event like a movie in the park or more than 500 people or contains high-risk activities like trampolines or alcohol, or music, you will need to issue a request to have this special event covered. Special events can cost anywhere from $50 – $500 per event.
Events that include high risk activities. According to the insurance provider that typically includes: alcohol, music, over 300 people, trampolines, races and competitive sports, and other dangerous activities.
Events and activities on City-owned property like parks or in the road right-of-way typically require proof of general liability insurance. Ideally, the NA will know what events they have coming up in May when SEUL renews its insurance and make the request at that time. We understand that things come up and you may need to request a certificate mid-year. Please give SEUL at least 2 weeks to get the certificate. It can take anywhere from 2-15 days to get a certificate depending on a number of factors.
Three main aspects of coverage appear to be shifting. First, the City of Portland is requiring Abuse and Molestation insurance for entities who serve or interact with children or vulnerable adults. Second, insurance providers are getting more strict about who and what they will cover for entities we extend our coverage to. Lastly, as NAs become their own 501C3, insurance providers recommend they get their own coverage as a separate and independent Organization (that “control” logic), that said, so long as the scope of the NAs activities has not changed, SEUL will continue to extend our coverage until we are told we can’t by the insurance provide.
If it were up to us we would! However, our insurance provider only allows us to extend our insurance to groups and activities that SE Uplift has some level of ”control” over – the logic being that we would then also be able to mange the “risk” (e.g. say no to activities that involve tightropes and swimming with sharks). That said, we don’t want this to be a barrier for great projects and events so please check in with staff early if you have an upcoming event or project that needs coverage.
No, we do this as a courtesy and as part of our Liaison Program. Neither the ONI Standards nor our grant agreement with the City of Portland require we provide D&O Coverage.
Insurance companies do not align perfectly with SEUL’s desire to provide it to everyone we can OR our grant agreement, city codes or the ONI Standards. The insurance provider is not governed by any of these other requirements and SEUL has to work within the parameters of our insurance provider to provide the best coverage we can to meet our grant agreement, ONI Standards, and our mission.
Yes, SEUL’s Grant Agreement with Civic Life requires that anything produced/provided using funds from the grant (i.e. insurance) include their logo. Download an include a SEUL and OCCL Logo to add to your promotional materials.