Jeep recovery team
09-29-2008, 08:24 PM
#51
JK Super Freak
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: SoCal
Posts: 1,492
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I did some research on this and talked to my local CERT guy.
Right now my local CERT will only work with people who live in my town, even though the next closest CERT team is way up north county. His recommendation essentially was that anyone who is interested should just sign up with their local CERT team for the training and leave it at that. He is willing to sit down and discuss the idea further with a group of local people if we'd still like to, but I was trying to get a referral/handoff to someone higher, and I just didn't feel that he was very supportive of the idea even though he's willing to talk with us further.
But I know that you guys have bigger ideas than just getting involved in your hometown so I did a little more research.
First, there is a liability insurance issue that would have to be addressed - officially CERT and Red Cross volunteers must ride in the provided transportation because of liability issues involved with people using their own transportation (if you were to be injured or injure someone else while conducting official business). This was one of the biggest hurdles that the Hummer team had to overcome. Our organization would need to have a whopper of an insurance policy.
What really played into the H.O.P.E.'s (the Hummer team) favor is that they are sponsored and supported by the manufacturer (Hummer, AM General and American Motors). Which raises another point - legally we'd most likely run into problems using "Jeep" in a formal organization name without Jeep's consent.
So based upon everything that I learned, my recommendation if people are still interested in taking this further is to start with making contact with Chrysler (Jeep) to see if we can garner some support there. Anyone have any good contacts?
Another thing I'll throw out is that since the Red Cross has already gone through the process of working through these issues with H.O.P.E., they might be more open to partnering with us than CERT.
I do have experience in setting up and running a non-profit 501(c)6 corporation so if anyone can make more progress with their contacts I'm willing to help out with this.
Right now my local CERT will only work with people who live in my town, even though the next closest CERT team is way up north county. His recommendation essentially was that anyone who is interested should just sign up with their local CERT team for the training and leave it at that. He is willing to sit down and discuss the idea further with a group of local people if we'd still like to, but I was trying to get a referral/handoff to someone higher, and I just didn't feel that he was very supportive of the idea even though he's willing to talk with us further.
But I know that you guys have bigger ideas than just getting involved in your hometown so I did a little more research.
First, there is a liability insurance issue that would have to be addressed - officially CERT and Red Cross volunteers must ride in the provided transportation because of liability issues involved with people using their own transportation (if you were to be injured or injure someone else while conducting official business). This was one of the biggest hurdles that the Hummer team had to overcome. Our organization would need to have a whopper of an insurance policy.
What really played into the H.O.P.E.'s (the Hummer team) favor is that they are sponsored and supported by the manufacturer (Hummer, AM General and American Motors). Which raises another point - legally we'd most likely run into problems using "Jeep" in a formal organization name without Jeep's consent.
So based upon everything that I learned, my recommendation if people are still interested in taking this further is to start with making contact with Chrysler (Jeep) to see if we can garner some support there. Anyone have any good contacts?
Another thing I'll throw out is that since the Red Cross has already gone through the process of working through these issues with H.O.P.E., they might be more open to partnering with us than CERT.
I do have experience in setting up and running a non-profit 501(c)6 corporation so if anyone can make more progress with their contacts I'm willing to help out with this.
