Here is my take. I have some limited experience with this. First, the usual disclaimer, I am not a lawyer blah blah. I live in the United States, and am an employee of the state of North Carolina, so a state government employee. I volunteer with 3-4 nonprofits. I am the volunteer treasurer for our local Audubon chapter, and I helped get our liability insurance years ago.
I do some research on a large tract of private lands. I recently worked with the owners to get a waiver created for someone from “the general public” visiting by my invitation.
My understanding is that in order to “need” liability coverage, you need to be ‘an entity’, which you are not. I mean, you are, a person, but I’m referring to a group e.g. a charitable organization or such. The other consideration is if you are the owner of a large property and invite people onto your land. Your “group” is doing neither, so at least in the U.S. you would not be “liable”. So what IDfanatic said is the basic concept: you are “friends” – it’s the same as if you were having a picnic in your house/yard and invited the neighbors over.
Given your situation, just because you invite someone to do something does not make you liable.
Waivers have been mentioned. The other groups you have worked with are true “groups” and this is why they have people sign a waiver. A waiver, per se, is often considered “poor insurance” but in fact it’s better than not using it. People will sue anyway but when those other companies etc, produce a waiver, it shows that they did “the right thing”, right up front. Again, the liability is to the organization (which again can also be a private landowner).
When I am involved in an Audubon-sponsored program, we normally visit a public site and if a waiver is needed, it is provided by the site owner (e.g. our city Parks Dept provides us with a waiver to use when we do organized hikes). But, an individual can go walk in a city/county/state park without signing a waiver. It’s a bit squishy. But we offer it via our chapter because people, especially in the U.S., love to sue other people.
When our Museum offers an outdoor public program, we make everyone attending sign a waiver.
I mentioned that I work on private land. I also mentor teenagers, and I have volunteers from the general public. I worked with the property owners to generate a waiver for these folks that I bring out. It’s a standard (stupid really) waiver which simply highlights what any outdoorsy, fieldwork person knows (“watch out for…” – it’s common sense but because of how things can go, we have to point out that there are ticks and snakes and ….. ). But we have it and again it shows “due diligence” on our (really the owners) part. (My employer also pays for my background checks for working with youth).
As I have implied, if you were here in the U.S., you would not need insurance, and because you are not a recognized organization, you really don’t need a waiver although it’s fine to create one and try have folks sign it. Some might balk because, again, you are not “an entity” – so in that sense, you have no “right” to ask someone to sign anything. Here in the U.S., if I invited “friends and neighbors” to go on a walk and then asked them to sign a waiver, they would all refuse – and probably get mad.
As I mentioned, in my roles as an employee and volunteer with the Audubon chapter I do some work with underage (<18) youth. With the Audubon chapter, our previous insurer cancelled our coverage a few years ago - no matter how much we might pay – they had decided that they would no longer insure anyone who worked with youth – even just day trips. Touching. So much for “Pass It On…”. This was the Hartford group and after all the stuff with the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, etc, they decided to stay clear of anyone working with youth. If youth are involved, it’s trickier.
So we found another insurer. Interestingly enough, last month we went to renew and they started asking more questions. First, we had stopped working with youth separate from their parents, which simplifies things. But now, the agent asked if we were organizing walks and stream cleanups and such because if so, they couldn’t insure us. Amazing. Well, we do those things of course – but we do them via our city and county parks departments. And we use their waivers. When we explained this, the agent said “Oh, that’s ok then.” And they renewed our liability policy. Our chapter is an incorporated charitable entity.