Handling the workload when

Our board consists of President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, 3 at large directors. Our committees include Communication, Social, Maintenance, Finance, Nominating, Architectural Review (A/R), Compliance. Each Committee has a board member to oversee it but committee members do the work of the committee. Fairly standard. The Social and Communication committees are not required by our governing documents.

The Social, Communication are essentially defunct. The board President is the Liaison. Nominating only staffed for elections. AR, Finance – Treasurer , one non board member to review the books. Compliance only has one person which is the VP. Very problematic. The maintenance committee only has one person, a former board member no liaison and I have requested that we put a liaison there. The liaisons are required by our governing documents.
One of the 3 at large directors (me) handles the website, all electronic communications including an online/ email newsletter as material permits. One of the at large members is MIA (see my topic “Chronic absences and member "friendships" hindering board“ ). One at large director has nothing and will not take on anything.

We have approx. 115 homes. We don’t have a pool, playground, sidewalks, club house, sports courts, or other amenities. Our overhead is lawn care, snow removal, lighting (electric costs only), legal fees, usual mailings, insurance, and not much more. We do have some key projects that need to be addressed including getting our roads evaluated so that we can build that maintenance plan. (4 year struggle on that), Review & update our C&R, By-laws, contract renewals and bids, escalating compliance issues, delinquent dues & collections.

We have operated with as few as 5 board members and now we have 7 elected but one is MIA. The recent tone of the majority of the board is that, “having a volunteer who does nothing is better than no one at all.” I was in the minority on that. We just re-elected board officers. Prior to that two of us laid out our shortages on the committees, lack of board member liaisons and the fact that there is only 1 person on Compliance. We asked that before officers were elected that we address the shortages to figure out how to handle the work load. Essentially, we were all going to have to pick up a little more. No luck. The elections occurred and 2 of us voted no on all nominations.

Basically we proposed a sharing of the work load & prioritization. Retire the non-required committees. Put any non-essential plans/ projects on hold. Remove any committee members that are not participating. Actively recruit to build up the Compliance & Maintenance Committees. Have committee representatives (not a liaison) attend Board meetings. Basically, the majority said no dice keep things the way they are.

What am I asking for? Given our community make up how would some of you recommend handling our situation. I know there are many different answers. The other board member that is looking at this has been on boards for 20+ years. He is at a loss as well. He and I want to try to propose something at the next meeting.
Your assistance on this is greatly appreciated. The two of us who proposed this see the writing on the wall and we don’t believe things are going in the best interest of the Community.

You surely have a lot of co called ‘committees’ and I understand your point. This is how I view it.
A committee is ‘a group of people’ with well-defined responsibilities/tasks. Your Articles of Incorporation (or the WV law for non profit corporation) should describe the minimum number of members required to serve on a committee. The Florida law requires a minimum of two people. Nevertheless, our Bylaws require ‘financial reviews’ be done by a committee of three members.
Perhaps your community has just a few volunteers who are not really required to have meetings or submit reports, etc? I, for instance would hesitate to serve on any committee unless the BOD specified in writing their expectations, describe the authority given to the committee and if necessary approved the budget for possible expenditures.

So you have committees for your committees?? LOL. Seems a bit overdone with the officials...Time to thin down the house and get back to the basics. Exactly where is it written you must have committees? I only know of one committee requirement and that was the Archectual Control Committee (ACC). However, if there's not enough volunteers for the ACC then the BOARD/President act as the ACC.

The good news is it sounds like you have enough member involvement to succeed in transitioning to a less committee oriented HOA. It sounds like eliminating some of these committees and putting the burden back to where it belongs with the BOD is good start. The BOD is the ultimate decision makers and the committees are just helpful volunteers to help make that ultimate decision work better. It may sound overwhelming but it's work...

I'd keep some committees but combine them to be some kind of liason to the board. A Board review committee so to speak. A checks and balances system. You will find some volunteers in the group better in some areas than others so they can focus their energies in that area. Thinning down and re-organzing a bit may indeed be the solution to many issues. It's hard to find volunteers and worrying about filling positions could be eliminated by reducing positions.

We used MYCOMPLUS.com software. We have 5 ppl on the BODs and they handle everything. Actually, 2 people do 99% of the work the software doesn't. We went from 2 people in an office, 80 plus man hours a weeks and now we are down to about 4 hours a week thanks to their solution. Our BOD meets once a month at an open meeting, open to the members. Everything else is done on MYCOMPLUS cloud ISaaS software. We access it anywhere we have internet access and we even have a private committe discussion for that we use amongst the BODs and committee members to communicate during the month. Our system A&R is automated, all the way to filing the liens and doing all the mailings. Things are alot easier from the easy chair at home after a hard days work.
Just offering solutions, not affiliated with MYCOMPLUS software.