goodcompany would like to remind all our registered community groups that they need to have a current insurance policy to cover their volunteers.

During the registration process, all community groups are required to tick a box to indicate that they have volunteer's insurance. In the future goodcompany will be asking all groups to provide us with the details of this policy.

Volunteers can be covered under a few different types of insurance, so if you are unsure whether you have insurance that covers volunteers, we recommend you read the advice below from ourcommunity.com.au website.

Insurance from ‘Managing Our Volunteers’ Helpsheet – ourcommunity.com.au

If you have public liability insurance cover, the policy will generally extend to your volunteers for as long as they are engaged in duties authorised and directly related to your organisation.Therefore, whether it is fundraising, maintenance or caring activities they will, generally be covered as long as it is an authorised activity of your organisation. To ensure that this cover is extended to volunteers check your policy or seek advice from your insurer.

Another form of insurance - personal accident insurance is another form of insurance that you may want to consider for your volunteers. Personal accident insurance (or as it is sometimes known - Volunteer Insurance) generally covers members, volunteers, officials or participants for any out-of-pocket expenses following accidental injury, disability or death while carrying out their work on behalf of the organisation. This type of insurance would normally cover loss of income if the injured party were unable to work through sickness or injury.

The public Liability insurance covers volunteers where there is negligence involved whereas the personal accident insurance covers the injured party where there is accidental (no negligent act) injury.