The Certificate of Insurance Request Form
So you’ve figured out that you need to complete the form on our website? You’ll need the following before you get started:
- Your fraternity/sorority and Greek chapter name
- Date and type of event (philanthropic, social, chapter, etc.)
- Whether alcohol is being served (and who’s serving it…the venue? A catering company?)
- If alcohol is being served, we’ll need a Certificate of Insurance showing proof that the alcohol provider has liquor liability coverage.
- Name and address of the venue or person requesting the certificate
- A copy of your contract in PDF form to upload
Now we’ll go step-by-step through the form together.
- First, you’ll need to enter the date of your event. If your event is several days, we will ask for the event end date later in the form.
- The form will ask if you have reviewed and are following your event planning policies. You’ll need to have done so in order to proceed.
- The form will ask if you have all of the documentation listed above to make it easier to complete the form.
- The next page of the form asks if the venue is asking to be listed as an Additional Insured or if your contract is asking for a Certificate of Insurance. If the answer to either of those questions is yes, you’ll proceed with the form.
- If you answer no to both questions, you don’t need anything further from MJ Sorority and should proceed with your organization’s event planning guidelines.
- On the next page of the form, you’ll upload your contract. Make sure you upload the entire contract, not just the insurance section.
- On the next page, the form asks for YOUR first and last name. You’ll click next, and the form will ask for your position, email, and phone number, so that we can easily contact you with any questions we have.
- On the next page of the form, you’ll choose your fraternity or sorority name, and your Greek chapter name.
- The next page asks you to choose the type of event from a dropdown list – choose social, philanthropic, or chapter retreat depending on your specific event.
- Answer whether or not alcohol will be served and how many attendees you’re expecting.
- The next section refers to the third-party requesting a Certificate from you. Remember: A Certificate of Insurance is issued to provide proof that your organization is adequately insured. Therefore, you would not request that the Certificate of Insurance be issued to Alpha Alpha Alpha Sorority*, or to Susie Sorority, or Abigail Advisor, my Advisor. This is the name and address of the VENUE or VENDOR that has asked that you provide proof of insurance. In this section, you can add the end date of your event if applicable and any additional comments that you want us to be aware of.
- On the final page, we ask you to confirm several statements to ensure that we can quickly turn-around your request.
- That’s it! We’ll be in touch with your Certificate of Insurance, or any questions if we have them.
Reviewing Contracts
- When you have a question on a contract or have a contract with insurance verbiage, please complete the Certificate of Insurance Request Form and upload the entire contract via the form on our website.
- A snippet may not contain all the requirements needed in determining how favorable or unfavorable the contract is. Contracts often have insurance language throughout the entire document, which can be easily missed and often contradict other things in contracts.
- Please avoid sending contracts without an explanation or supporting documents. Always complete the Certificate of Insurance Request Form with any contract to avoid big delays.
Requesting a Certificate from Someone Else
- When reviewing or requesting a Certificate of Insurance from a third-party vendor or a venue when they are providing the alcohol, always ensure that the limits are specified on the Certificate of Insurance. We recommend the following limits, but check with your organization’s policies. Recommended minimum limits (when applicable):
- General Liability—$1,000,000
- Liquor Liability—$1,000,000
- Workers’ Compensation/Employee Liability—$100,000/$500,000/$100,000
- Automobile Liability (for buses) —$1,000,000
- Feel free to cut and paste the following verbiage to request a Certificate of Insurance from a third-party.
As part of our event planning process we are required by our National Organization to obtain a Certificate of Insurance from venues/vendors we chose to use for our events. It is recommended that we use vendors/venues with a minimum of $1, 000,000 General Liability and $1,000,000 Liquor Liability. The Liquor Liability and Liquor Liability limits must be shown on the Certificate of Insurance for venues/vendors where alcohol is being provided. The purpose of this document is to simply provide the limits and proof that coverage is in place. We are not asking to be covered under your insurance policy as we have an insurance policy that will cover any damages caused by our negligence.
*We are using this as a generic sorority name as an example. Substitute in your sorority’s name.
We are finding an increasing number of chapters using event planning companies/individuals to organize their social and philanthropic functions. While we do understand that planning for large events is often complicated and time-consuming, we are finding that many of the event planners that we have dealt with are not taking the time to review the contracts with the venues, often leaving our clients obligated to much more expansive and concerning liability and negligence verbiage than we are comfortable with in these contracts. In addition, because the event planner/s does not know your organization’s specific policies, we are finding that chapters that outsource their events to event planner/s are often not abiding by their fraternity’s or sorority’s policies regarding event planning.
Therefore, we are often finding that the chapters that engage the use of event planners believe that the event planner is handling all of the details of the event, when in fact, the event planners are not. When we are finally made aware of the situation (most often when a Certificate of Insurance is requested), it is often very late in the planning process, which makes it difficult to modify the contract or plan a different event, depending on the severity of the contract language.
If your chapters are using event planners, we would encourage you to make sure the event planners are aware of your organization’s event planning policies, as well as communicating to your chapter officers that they still need to verify that they are meeting your organization’s risk management policies even when they engage the use of an event planner. In addition, we recommend that when Certificates of Insurance are requested, that you provide both the contract from the event planner and the venue to us at MJ Sorority.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Ruth Akers.
For example
An Event Planner signs a contract on your behalf with additional insured language, which obligated the Sorority to extend coverage to the hotel holding the event. The hotel used glass bottles to serve drinks, some of which were broken on and around the dance floor. A chapter member’s guest sliced his foot open on the glass and severed a tendon in his foot. Because the contract obligated the Sorority to add the hotel onto their policy as an additional insured, the Sorority’s insurance policy was triggered even though the hotel’s employee broke the glass that caused the injury.
November 2020: Topics include security claims and challenges, embezzlement claims, COVID-19 & event planning.
November 2019: Topics include flu season, electrical devices, electric blankets, & podcast.
October 2018: Topics include winter driving, space heaters, employee safety & hail damage.
March 2018: Topics include hurricanes, mold & smoke detectors.
May 2018: Topics include Habitat for Humanity, campus crime, embezzlement claims, frozen pipes, mental health & employment law.
January 2018: Topics include designated drivers, sober sis programs, heat sensors, insurance basics, & legalization of marijuana in Canada.
June 2017: Topics include flood coverage, non-owned and hired automobile liability coverage, & grills.
Here is the more printer-friendly PDF version.
March 2017: Topics include attic fires, heat sensors, risk control report & fire pits.
At MJ Sorority, we created this resource packet to help our clients plan safer events during the COVID-19 pandemic.