Denise took over as booster club president in a small Wise County town this summer. The job came with a binder, a bank account, and about two weeks before the first home game. One email arrived early from the district's facilities office: before the concession stand could open, they needed a certificate of insurance from the club.
Denise assumed the district's own coverage handled that — the stadium, the staff, all of it. It handles the district. It does not automatically extend to a parent-run booster club serving food under its own name.
The club is not the school district
Booster clubs typically organize as their own nonprofit entities, separate from the school district itself, even though they exist to support district teams and programs. That separation is exactly why the district's own liability coverage does not reach into what happens at the club's concession stand or fundraiser table.
Legally, it is a different organization running that activity, even when it happens on district property on a Friday night. Most clubs have their own EIN, bank account, and elected officers — Denise's binder included all three — and that paper trail is exactly what makes a district's insurance carrier draw a hard line at the district's own employees and property.
From the district's perspective, the club is simply another outside group using the facility, no different in principle than a rented gym for a weekend tournament. That means the club needs its own
event insurance or general liability policy, sized for whatever it actually does across a season rather than borrowed as a one-time favor from the district.
What event liability covers on game night
General liability for a club like Denise's covers the everyday things that can go wrong when a crowd shows up: a spectator hurt on club-controlled equipment, bodily injury tied to something the club is running, and property damage the club's own operation causes to the venue. It is the same broad category of coverage a small business would carry, just scaled to a volunteer group's activities instead of a storefront.
It will not apply to everything that happens in the stadium generally — that stays the district's exposure. It covers what the club itself is responsible for running, which on a typical Friday night is most of what the club actually touches: the concession stand, the gate table, the halftime raffle.
Concessions, raffles, and fundraisers
Serving food adds an exposure that general spectator liability does not automatically cover. A claim tied to something someone ate at the stand needs to sit within the policy's scope rather than be assumed as included, so it is worth confirming products liability coverage directly with an agent instead of guessing.
Raffles carry a layer of complexity that sits apart from the insurance question. Texas law limits which organizations can run a raffle and sets rules around entry, prize value, and where proceeds go, and those rules are specific enough that a club should confirm it qualifies — with an attorney, if there is any doubt — before printing a single ticket. A raffle run outside those rules is a legal problem, not an insurance one.
Once a raffle is properly structured, the insurance question gets narrower: whether the club's liability policy actually responds if a prize claim goes wrong. A fifty-dollar gift basket and a truck or a hunting package are different animals for insurance purposes, and a club offering a big-ticket prize should confirm the policy contemplates something that size. The same goes for 50/50 cash drawings, which carry less complexity but still fall under the same charitable-raffle rules.
Bounce houses and outside vendors
Inflatables are a fall-festival staple, and the rule worth following every time is simple: never assume a bounce house or vendor's own coverage automatically protects the club. A vendor should carry its own general liability policy and be willing to name the booster club as an additional insured for that event.
That means the club is added onto the vendor's own policy in writing, before setup — not promised verbally on game day. It is worth checking that the certificate's dates actually cover the event, since a policy can be current in general but written for a different weekend, and keeping a copy on file for every vendor used across the season.
The same checklist applies to any outside vendor working a club event, not just inflatables. A face-painting table, a photo booth, or a food truck booked through the club all raise the identical question of whose policy actually responds if something goes wrong.
Certificates the venue will ask for
Facility-use paperwork looks different from one school district to the next, and UIL rules add another layer that varies depending on the activity involved. If a fundraiser happens at a city park instead of school property, permit requirements come from the municipality rather than the district, so it is worth checking directly with whoever actually manages the venue rather than assuming one standard applies everywhere.
What tends to hold steady is that somebody is going to want a certificate of insurance naming the venue before the gates open — the same document Denise's district asked for before the first home game. A certificate cannot be issued for a policy that is not bound yet, which is the real reason getting coverage in place early in the season matters more than it might seem back in August.
Folding this into a broader look at the club's
business insurance needs, rather than treating each certificate request as its own fire drill, tends to save a lot of back-and-forth once the season is underway.
Season-long coverage and protecting the board
Clubs that run one big fundraiser a year sometimes buy a single-event policy just for that day. A club active every home game across a football season is usually better served by a season-long annual policy, since one certificate can typically cover the whole run of home games and fundraisers instead of requiring a new policy for every Friday night.
It is also worth a longer look at directors and officers coverage, often called D&O — protection for board members personally, covering claims about how the organization is managed rather than what happens on the concession line. It can matter if the club ever pays a stipend to anyone, since employment-related claims generally fall outside general liability and land closer to
professional liability coverage instead.
A club's nonprofit and tax status is its own separate question from any of this, and it is worth a conversation with an accountant about what that status actually requires rather than treating anything here as tax advice.
None of this is likely in a typical season. But a volunteer who signs on as treasurer or president is taking on personal exposure most people do not think about until a disagreement over money turns into something more formal.
Denise got her certificate to the district three days before kickoff, with a season-long policy in place instead of a one-off scramble. The binder she inherited is a little thicker now, in a good way.
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