COC Reboot

In the 2000s, we had paper waivers for everyone.  It was an absolute nightmare for collecting, recording and monitoring waivers collected.  When we moved to an online waiver for members, we alleviated a lot of that, but still had to contend with monitoring, collecting and recording guest waivers.  We did an analysis of how much benefit we were getting from allowing guests vs the cost (in effort) to do the work, and decided to make event attendance for members-only.  Reasoning:
1) The club was free to join and attend, so if someone wanted to just come out on an event now and then, they could still do that with a free membership (and accept the online waiver);
2) There were very few child guests attending, and there was a high level of discomfort with the legalities of allowing children, so we decided to disallow their attendance.

A few years ago, Mark M (president at the time) felt very strongly that allowing guests was the solution to dwindling club attendance and brought back guests, including the guest waivers.  The process was:
1) Event coordinators would collect the guest waivers, and then submit an electronic copy to the club;
2) Mark would monitor to ensure guest waivers were completed and submitted properly (Mark has long since left the exec team).

My concerns:
1) Our non-profit status protects members from being sued by other members.  Our executive insurance protects the board from being sued by external parties.  For the sake of allowing guests, we are, in my opinion, negating the protection afforded our coordinators by the non-profit status
2) I'm not sure that an electronic copy of a waiver is sufficient if the COC were to be sued.  We may be introducing further legal risk by failing to retain the paper/original waiver copies.
3) Collection and submission of waivers is currently on an "honor system" - there is no one who actively monitors what events allow guests and whether waivers are collected and submitted for those events.

My proposal:
1) If/when we return to a voluntary donation funding model for Regular Members, there is no "benefit" for an adult to attending as a guest.  They should be encouraged to sign up for a free membership and attend as a member, accepting the online waiver.
2) If/when we have coordinators who wish to allow children on their events, the club could re-instate guest attendance with the condition that it will be in effect only as long as we have a minimum of one, preferably two, volunteers committed to monitoring and collecting guest waivers.

If/when we re-instate guest attendance, we can research some of my concerns regarding electronic waiver copies.  If we're going to disallow guests regardless, that research can wait until or unless we have coordinators wishing to allow children on their events.

We have two former volunteers who may be interested in running "child-friendly" events for the COC.  Here's an e-mail that I sent to both of them today:

I wanted to reach out to you to talk about COC events with guests (including children).

I think it's awesome that you're interested in maybe coordinating again for the COC, and maybe offering events that would be kid-friendly.  

That being said, I don't love the COC's implementation of guests/waivers right now.  You'll probably recall that the COC shut down guests entirely for a time "back in the day" because of:1) The amount of administration required in monitoring and recording waivers received; AND2) The uncertain liability of allowing children on events.

The EOC had a situation several years ago where someone was frequently bringing her nieces and nephews on club events.  Nothing ever happened, thankfully, but it did open the question of, well, so our club member can be trusted not to sue us, but she's not even the PARENT.  The parents were a completely unknown entity to the club, and there was a lot of anxiety around what might happen if something happened to one of those kids on an event.  That factored largely into EOC's decision to shut down guests entirely.

Now, when the COC started allowing guests again a few years ago, it was with an "agreement" with Mark MacGilvray that he would personally monitor that waivers were correctly being collected and submitted to the club.  Mark is no longer a volunteer with the club, and there is no one currently monitoring waivers.  The two event coordinators who are currently allowing guests on their events have been great about submitting waivers, and I'm not super concerned about it at this time, however, as we (hopefully) rebuild our event coordinator team, we're going to be running a greater and greater risk in this space... a risk that must be mitigated.

When the club changes back to free membership for regular members (hopefully) on December 10th, there will again be little to no value in allowing adult guests on events.  Adults who want to attend can simply sign up for a free membership.  CHILDREN, however, may only attend as guests.  It is my intention on December 9th to recommend that the club suspend guest functionality again.  You can see the executive committee event at https://www.calgaryoutdoorclub.com/events/details.asp?eventid=27592 and the discussion forum item (we're not going to discuss at the meeting, only make the decision, with the discussion being done ahead of time through the forum) is here: https://cocreboot.createaforum.com/2020-12-08/suspend-guests-on-events/

Note that guest functionality can easily be switched on and off.  Switching it off today doesn't mean that we can't switch it back on tomorrow, and we'll be more than happy to switch it back on when we have a volunteer who is willing to take on the task of monitoring events (i.e., check every event posted to see if it allows guests), and for every event that does allow guests, monitor that the coordinator submits the signed waiver.  

I am very much in favor of your vision to offer child-friendly events.  I think there would potentially be a good amount of interest in that.  I just want to make sure that the club can do it safely and responsibly.  At this time, with no one in the position of monitoring waivers, we are not doing it "responsibly".  

As you are thinking about offering events with the COC which would allow child guests, can you please also think about whether you'd be willing and able to step up to that position of monitoring guest waiver collection?  If we allow guests on events, we will discourage (but not disallow) adult guests, so hopefully it wouldn't be too onerous of a task, and if our "child-friendly" events become so popular that it DOES become and onerous task, well, then we simply have to recruit a larger "team" of people to do the monitoring.

This is all just FYI for now, as I know that you're not necessarily ready to start coordinating "child friendly" events tomorrow, but I don't want you to be blind-sided by this.  I want you to know exactly what it would entail.

Regardless of whether we suspend guests or not, I want to write into our rules that CHILD guests may only attend with their PARENT (children may not attend under the supervision of another family member, or a family friend).  I want to have this because, even if the attendee wouldn't sue us if something happens to the child, if there isn't a parent in attendance, we don't know for sure that there is permission in place for the child to attend, nor do we know that the parents wouldn't sue us if something happens to the child.

Yes, for adults.  The only reason for us to consider keeping guests is for children, in which case, as I said in my e-mail to the two former volunteers, if they want to offer child-friendly events, we'd love to have them, but only if we have a volunteer who's monitoring waivers.  Essentially, they'd have to put the work in to make it happen (i.e., those of us who aren't going to run child-friendly events aren't going to put in that effort to make it possible on their behalf).