How to Operate a HEMA Club: Insurance, and What It's For
For readers who did not already know, I am moving from Minneapolis to upstate New York in the next month or so. Since I have in the past taken care of some of the admin work for the Minneapolis Amateur Swordfighting Association (MASA), my departure means that my clubmates may want someone else to take over the admin side of things.
This article addresses one element of this: Club insurance. There are other elements of club admin involved in running a club - organizational management (types of entities, who is in charge); finances and taxes; day-to-day operations (managing gear, paying bills, collecting dues); “What kind of club you want to be,” and club culture. I may write future articles addressing other elements.
So, while I could write up a guide that is exclusively for an audience of my MASA clubmates, it strikes me that this is also a potentially useful “public interest” topic, so it is written that way. Note this concerns only clubs in the United States - the insurance and administrative elements of running clubs in other countries is well outside my experience.
Big pimpin up in HRE
What Kind of Insurance You Need and Why
One of the most basic elements of operating a HEMA club in the United States is that the club should carry insurance. “You need insurance” is often repeated as a truism, and indeed it is something of a red flag when a club does not have insurance. However, in my experience, what the insurance is for and why it matters is not always clearly understood by some people.
There are two basic types of insurance a martial arts club needs to have:
Liability insurance to cover the possibility that someone gets seriously hurt as part of training and decides to sue the club itself or people associated with it (e.g. an instructor; another student; the providers of the training space; and so on).
In this situation, the person bringing suit would probably be seeking to recover the damages and costs they have suffered as a result of their injury, such as lost wages at their job, costs for medical bills, pain and suffering, etc.; and
Sometimes additional insurance is needed to cover the possibility of damage done to a physical space in which the club conducts its training (e.g. a space the club rents from someone else).
In this situation, the owner of the space might be suing to recover the costs they incur making repairs to the damage done by people using their space.
It should be clearly understood that the liability insurance mentioned above (#1) is not usually meant to cover most of the “routine” injuries that happen in the course of training fencing and martial arts. These might include injuries that are unpleasant, but don’t result in severe impairment to one’s ability to function - things like taking a hard/painful hit that leaves a light bruise and might sprain a joint that does not severely impact life and functioning. Most health insurance plans in the United States typically cover “sports injuries,” and that is how club members can present these kinds of minor injuries to their doctors and health insurance providers.
Instead, what the insurance is supposed to cover is major injuries that result in an impairment of someone’s life and day-to-day functioning that are serious, potentially long-lasting, and may have serious financial consequences. If these are dire enough, the person who got hurt may want to sue the club because they feel the club was negligent. Examples might include: concussions - including repeated concussions; broken bones; severe, painful bruising; puncture wounds caused by equipment piercing the skin or damaging internal organs; neurological damage; the list goes on.
One real-life example from the latter class of injuries is the lawsuit brought by Jeremiah DuPrau against Swordguild Portland instructor Jason Romandelle Brown, along with Swordguild Portland [i.e. the club itself] and the Elks’ Milwaukie Portland Lodge No. 142, from whom Swordguild Portland was renting its training space. Mr. DuPrau alleged in his $9M lawsuit that he was not wearing a fencing mask and was stabbed in the eye by Mr. Brown, with the sword piercing his eye socket and into his brain, causing a life-altering injury with lifelong health consequences.
The latter class of injuries can all result in major, costly medical bills, as well as lost ability to work and gain income from work. If the person hurt in training decides to sue the club, their costs and lost income can become part of the damages they are seeking to recover from the club in their lawsuit.
So, the liability insurance mentioned above is meant to shield the club, its instructors, its members, etc. from at least some of the financial consequences of someone suing the club like this. It cannot stop a lawsuit from happening, but it can cover some of the costs of a legal settlement or judgment against the club.
The amount of financial coverage offered by liability insurance varies. In the Swordguild Portland case mentioned above, the suit was initially brought for $9 million. I am not familiar with the outcome of that case, if it has even been resolved - the amount in dispute may have changed as part of settlement discussions. But, in general, if the final damages of a lawsuit (or settlement of a lawsuit) exceeds whatever amount a club’s insurance policy covers, then the club and its operators may potentially be personally liable for the difference.
This is why it is crucial that HEMA clubs maintain insurance. When there is a matter serious enough that a lawsuit is brought, the dollar amounts are large. If individual instructors and club operators find themselves personally liable for these kinds of costs, it could mean their personal financial ruin and potential bankruptcy, if they can even afford to pay.
It is worth noting that when a HEMA club approaches the owner of a space about renting it to train or hold an event in, it is not uncommon for the owner to ask for confirmation that the club / event organizers possess liability insurance (type #1 above). This is an example of venue-owners seeking to avoid getting “caught in the blast radius” of a lawsuit in the event that someone gets seriously hurt and sues, and becoming an incidental party on the defensive end of a lawsuit.
It also worth noting that insurance type #2 mentioned above - “additional insurance” - is most commonly an issue if a club is renting space from someone else who may have their own interests in the space. Common examples of spaces that a club might rent would include squash courts, community centers, gyms, workout studios, dance studios, other martial arts clubs, and similar. All these businesses have a commercial interest in their facilities not being damaged.
However, since this type of insurance is meant more to cover physical spaces/facilities in general, “renting space from someone else” is not the only circumstance where this can come up. For example, if a club is meeting at someone’s home, and there is an accident that somehow results in major, costly damage to the home that the people involved do not want to pay for, the homeowner might decide to sue the club, its members, instructor, etc. to recover the costs.
This would probably amount to a burning of bridges with the club on a social level, obviously, but from a risk management standpoint it still needs to be understood. If the person whose home was damaged had a marginal relationship with either the club or the people that did the damage, they might want to sue.
Insurance Waivers
One thing that probably almost all HEMA clubs do is have their members sign a “waiver” or “release” for insurance purposes. It is important to understand what these documents are, what they say they do, and what they might actually do if push comes to shove and there is a lawsuit.
The substance of these agreements is usually a promise not to sue the club, its instructors, its members, and so on. The specific wording of this promise varies, but in general what you are “waiving” is your right to sue in the event of an injury in training. When the waiver is discussed in terms of it being a “release,” the “release” is usually the signatory “releasing the club from liability” for costs/injuries/damages/etc.
The HEMA Alliance, for its part, offers an insurance waver for the use of its affiliated clubs at https://www.hemaalliance.com/s/HEMA-Alliance-Waiver.pdf whose substance is - basically - “By signing this, you are agreeing not to sue the HEMA Alliance-affiliated club who provided you with this agreement, its people, the people it got its space from - AND The HEMA Alliance itself.”
Whether these types of waivers would actually be effective in shielding a HEMA club from a lawsuit is complex. It depends on enough factors - including local laws - that it is probably hard to make any broad conclusions about whether they would really work. Waiving one’s right to sue someone else is a significant right to sign away, and some states’ laws may not honor this. In some states/legal jurisdictions, the waiver might be effective, and a lawsuit might have complications getting started; in another state/legal jurisdiction, the very same agreement with the very same text might be ruled to have no legally binding effect, and a lawsuit would be unimpeded.
From a practical point of view of legal risk assessment and management, the most conservative, risk-averse course of action is for club operators to have their members sign waivers like this in the hopes that they will provide a measure of protection to the club, while also assuming that their insurance waivers are not going to protect the club.
If this spurs club operators to enact responsible safety policies, then so much the better for them and their students.
Where to Get Insurance
There are two main sources for liability insurance in the United States: directly from an insurance company that covers activities like HEMA, and via membership in The HEMA Alliance.
As of April 2021, a large U.S. insurance company that provides insurance for most of the fencing, wrestling, and other martial arts-related activities involved in HEMA is called Francis L. Dean and Associates (“FL Dean”). Their website is https://fdean.com/, and a summary of their sports-related insurance coverage options is available at https://fdean.com/Insurance/Sports.
Another company that appears to provide insurance that might be suitable is https://www.sportsinsurance.com/. A summary of the activities they cover is provided by clicking the logo at the top left of the site, as of April 2021. (The URL linking directly to their list of covered activities appears to be dynamic, so note that this link may not work in the future.)
The cost of getting an insurance policy directly from an insurance company varies, depending on what kind of things you want to do, how many people / club members you want to cover, and so on. These costs might fluctuate from year to year. It has been a few years since I last investigated what the cost of an individual club policy would be and how such a policy would be structured, but:
In 2018, I recall learning that it would cost MASA between $500 and $800 a year to get a club policy from FL Dean that would cover up to about 30 to 50 members.
In 2021, a friend of mine who gets her club’s insurance from FL Dean reported that a policy with a comparable number of members might cost her around $850-$1000 a year.
The only really accurate source for the cost of insurance directly from an insurer is to contact them for a quote. For HEMA clubs that intend to operate as free-standing legal entities that are not members of The HEMA Alliance, this is most likely the route they may want to consider for obtaining insurance, since they will not be able to get insurance as a member of The HEMA Alliance.
It is worth noting that the above are annual ballpark costs, and you may be able to work out payment schedules with the insurance company. Some quick math helps put these numbers in perspective. If we assume that a policy direct from the insurer costs $1000 / year:
That is $83.34 / month, or $250 / quarter, for the whole club.
A club of 5 dues-paying people can split that cost down to $16.67 per month for each individual, or $50 each per quarter.
A club of 10 people = $8.34 per month, or $25 per quarter.
A club of 15 people = $5.56 per month, or $16.67 per quarter.
So, while “$1000 / year” may seem like a big number at first glance, it can actually be surprisingly affordable from month to month depending on how many people you have contributing to the club’s insurance funds.
Something to consider if contacting an insurance company directly for insurance is whether they may require the club to operate as a free-standing legal entity. If so, this would mean that to become their client, the club would need to incorporate some kind of independent corporate entity. Examples of free-standing entities might include a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) or a tax-exempt 501(c)(7) organization (defined under U.S. Internal Revenue Service guidance as “clubs organized for pleasure, recreation, and other nonprofitable purposes”).
This being said, the topic of what kind of entity is “best” to form is outside the scope of this article, which is just about insurance. These answers may vary from state to state within the United States, as well, so the best source of answers for this is a lawyer with expertise in corporate law and tax law issues in the area of the club forming a legal entity. For our purposes in this article about insurance, it may suffice to note that forming an entity may be a requirement of the insurance company, and you can ask them about this if and when you contact them.
In summary, dealing directly with an insurance company to obtain insurance is an option that even small clubs may wish to consider, depending on how many dues-paying members they consistently have. It can be surprisingly affordable.
An alternative source for getting insurance for clubs that do not want to deal directly with an insurance company, or cannot afford to pay costs in the ballpark of the above, is to become an “Affiliate” of The HEMA Alliance (HEMAA). This is a very common solution to the problem of how to get insurance for clubs of all sizes, ranging from small study groups of a handful of people to some of the United States’ largest clubs with international-level instructors and strong track records in competition.
The HEMA Alliance is a 501(c)3 U.S. non-profit service organization for the Historical European Martial Arts community. It is incorporated as an educational non-profit in order to provide a wide range of services from a stable core whose educational mission is legally bound by open bylaws and democracy.
Additionally, one of The HEMA Alliance’s key functions is to serve as an insurance provider to clubs that cannot afford to, or don’t want to, deal directly with insurers. The benefit that it offers is that by pooling risks into a larger pool, it can provide insurance to its Affiliate clubs at a substantially lower cost than dealing directly with insurers, and it also takes care of much of the back-end finance and administration of getting and paying for that insurance on behalf of its member-Affiliate clubs.
The cost for getting insurance through the HEMAA, and eligibility requirements, are summarized at https://www.hemaalliance.com/club-affiliation:
$150 / year for the club itself ($12.50 / month). This covers the whole club, and can be split down even further depending on how many people are contributing to the insurance fund.
$26 / year for individual members. All members of the club must register as members of the HEMAA, and can do so at https://hemaa.tidyhq.com/public/membership_levels by clicking “In-network Discounted Alliance Membership.”
Getting insurance via the HEMA Alliance is therefore potentially much cheaper overall than getting it directly from an insurance company.
Becoming a HEMA Alliance Affiliate does involve certain constraints on your organization, as well as certain requirements for how you run your club, such as compliance with the bylaws of The HEMA Alliance and compliance with the HEMAA Safety Policy, discussed below. Most of these constraints are outside the scope of this article, which is about insurance. I might address these in a future article.
One aspect that is in-scope, because it ties to an Affiliate club’s ability to become/remain an Affiliate of the HEMAA and retain access to the insurance it provides, is that as of November 2020, HEMA Alliance Affiliates must have their own EIN (employer identification number). This can be obtained online via the IRS website at https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online.
An email communication sent by The HEMA Alliance to Affiliate clubs on Nov 30, 2020, indicated that new affiliates will need to submit an EIN to the HEMAA within three months of becoming an affiliate, and current affiliates will need to submit an EIN either at the time of their next affiliation renewal, or three months after, whichever is longer.
Constraints That Insurance Places on Your Training
Any insurance policy you get comes with requirements on how you have to train in order for injuries (and lawsuits related to them) to be covered by the insurance policy. These are generally fairly “lightweight” in practice, but are important to understand and apply during training.
The HEMA Alliance’s safety policy is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Je4HOszNTL8oTOlBwnfRk5ifVqplJdyKvUUdh8BfZLc/edit?usp=sharing. It is a well thought-out document that I will not attempt to separately summarize here, but is worth reading through. Some highlights for specifically prohibited activity include:
Sparring or opposed drilling with sharps.
Earnest sparring without proper head protection.
Sparring without hand protection appropriate to the speed level.
Intoxication of any kind by active participants and working staff. Willfully allowing participants/working staff to ingest intoxicating substances can and will be considered not enforcing the safety policy.
Most of these are not common. Some very advanced practitioners may wish to do certain activities with sharps, including drilling and sparring. However, these are undertaken only with partners that have complete trust in each other to use proper control, and with the understanding that any injuries sustained in the course of this mode of training would not be covered by insurance, as it falls outside the activities covered by the policy.
Getting an insurance policy directly from an insurance company will surely involve other safety constraints on training. If you do so, you should be provided with information about this from the company. I speculate that the restrictions would likely be similar.
Managing Insurance Compliance
There are a couple of elements to keeping your insurance coverage going and making sure it covers your members - a “back end” paperwork component and a “front end,” in-training component.
“Front End” Insurance Compliance
Clubs that get their insurance directly from an insurance company will likely be provided with guidance on how to ensure safe practices during training. Not having had a policy directly from an insurer, I cannot speak to the format or content of these. However, the insurance provided by The HEMA Alliance requires that training sessions have an “organizer” whose job it is to ensure that safety policies are actually followed in the real world, in training.
In some clubs, the “organizer” might be an instructor, but not necessarily - for example, some clubs do not have instructors because they are just a group of friends who get together to fence. Some clubs might also delegate the “organizer” responsibility to someone who is not an instructor, but is regularly at training sessions.
Regardless, the training session’s organizer must ensure compliance with the safety policy in order for the insurance coverage to cover potential injuries. It’s also just the right thing to do to keep your friends safe and healthy, and able to keep fencing. Failure to follow safety policies in training means that any injuries or lawsuits based on those injuries will not be covered by insurance.
In the grand scheme of things, someone not following safety policies does not automatically entail that they should be “kicked out” of the club. It is also no fun to “police” your friends and chase them about whether they are wearing proper gloves, a proper mask, etc.
However, in practice, refusal to follow safety procedures signals indifference to the safety of training partners and whether the club gets sued. Tolerating this sets a bad precedent for that person’s behavior, and not following safety procedures can make minor and major injuries more likely. Therefore, in my opinion, this should not be tolerated, and members who refuse to follow safety policies should be removed from training.
“Back End” Insurance Compliance
In addition to the in-person, “front end” component, there is more purely administrative paperwork associated with maintaining insurance. In my experience, this typically amounts to somewhere between 5-10 hours per year during normal club operations, split out into small stretches of a few minutes at a time, for a small club of 20-30 people. For larger clubs, it would take more.
Clubs that get their insurance directly from an insurance company should review any guidelines provided by the company for setting up and maintaining their back end insurance compliance files. As above, not having been a member of a club that gets insurance directly from an insurance company, I cannot speak to the format or content of this. However, my prior experience working with insurance compliance with a HEMA Alliance-affiliated club may be helpful in at least providing a framework for understanding how to track and manage this element of insurance compliance.
When a new member joins a HEMA Alliance Affiliate club, the new member should be registered with the HEMA Alliance by the club’s insurance person using the options at https://www.hemaalliance.com/for-beginner-students-only. This provides a two-month period of provisional insurance coverage for the new person that starts on the day the form is submitted.
At the end of the two-month period, the new person must either become a full member of The HEMA Alliance (as above - $26/year) or stop training. As noted, HEMAA Affiliate clubs must have all their members become individual HEMAA members, so if a new member does not do so, in practice this means they need to stop training to avoid the club falling out of compliance as a whole.
In addition to the club and its members becoming members of The HEMA Alliance, The HEMA Alliance requires that training sessions/events be registered at https://www.hemaalliance.com/activities-registry if they are to be covered by insurance.
Additionally, it is in the interest of club operators and members to keep internal track of when club members' individual memberships in The HEMAA expire. As noted above, a club becoming an Affiliate of the HEMAA entails that all its members must also be individual members of the HEMAA, and this needs to be maintained in order for the club to keep its Affiliate status. Here are some solutions I have found effective for tracking this information:
Have club members forward the club’s insurance administrator copies of the emails they receive from The HEMA Alliance when they become a member, typically with a subject line “In-network Discounted Alliance Membership for The Hema Alliance.”
The key expiration date is usually formatted like this at the bottom of the email:
Track expiration dates of members with a spreadsheet of some kind in MS Excel, Google Sheets, or similar. I use a simple Google Sheet that tracks the following pieces of data for club members:
Member Lastname (Legal)
Member Firstname (Legal)
Preferred Name, if not Legal Name
HEMAA Membership Validity Start
HEMAA Membership Validity End
HEMAA Liability Waiver On File? Y/N
Code of Conduct Agreement On File? Y/N
Email Address
If a new member joins and has a two-month period of insurance coverage, I typically enter their two-month membership date in the “HEMAA Membership Validity End” field.
Check the spreadsheet periodically (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and remind members with upcoming expirations to renew their memberships in the HEMAA. A club operator can set automated calendar reminders for themselves in Outlook, Google Calendar, or a similar software product to send them automated reminders to check the spreadsheet.
You can save yourself effort in this by embedding links to the spreadsheet in the reminder that you get, so that “future you” does not have to do much more than click the link and see if anyone’s expiration is coming up.
You can also put a template email into the calendar reminder so that you can quickly shoot out an email to the member asking for their updated expiration date. Keep it short and sweet - people won’t read a long email on their phone. Something like this might be sufficient:
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Hello _____ - The club’s insurance records show that your HEMA Alliance membership expiration is coming up soon. As a reminder, to continue training, you will need to renew this by [DATE OF MEMBER EXPIRATION IN MM/DD/YYYY FORMAT].
Please extend your HEMAA membership at https://hemaa.tidyhq.com/public/membership_levels by clicking “In-network Discounted Alliance Membership.”
Then, please forward me the email you get from The HEMA Alliance with the new expiration date. The email will likely have the subject line, “In-network Discounted Alliance Membership for The Hema Alliance.”
Thank you!
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Conclusion
Club administration and paperwork is seldom anyone’s first choice for a fun fencing-related activity, but it is a crucial element of a club’s existence, and it helps facilitate the club environment that allows training to thrive. The insurance-related components of club administration are particularly important, because they are required for virtually all forms of club, and are fundamental to providing a measure of financial protection to the members of the club in the event of accidents in training.
Understanding what goes into this element of club administration can help club members and administrators understand what tasks are necessary, and when. It can also help make managing insurance more time-efficient, allowing for undiluted focus on training and less work for the club’s insurance administrator.
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