Hiring a Marketing Company for HOA business

Hi All,
I am the board President of a 400 plus single family association. We tried last year to update our CC&Rs with the many new changes that have been made recently adding the Davis Sterling renumbering and since our community is 15 years old we removed all of the builder stuff that no longer applies. Our attorney prepared a cover sheet that explained all of the changes as best she could. It cost us nearly 20k for the printing, mailing and all of the other election cost and we could not reach quorum. Many people started spreading misinformation about how they interpreted the changes and made it sound like the board had some motive for get the CC&Rs updated.

So 15 months later we are talking about sending them out again along with a separate vote to ask the community if we can Gate our community. This is two separate votes but the committee responsible for the gate has asked for Marketing help to make sure that we put the gate information in a format that people can both understand and also feel motivated to vote even if it is against it. I thought that since the CC&Rs failed last year we could have the Marketing company work on both items. I brought the idea to our PM and she said that she had never heard of doing it and wanted to run it by the attorney. The attorney said that she does not recommend using this Marketing company and thinks that the information should come from her firm. I think that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. She said that we have to be concerned with the fact that it could be said that we are using HOA funds to win an election or influence it. She also says that anyone opposed to the CC&Rs or that Gate could get the same amount of funds to put together a anti campaign. We had planned to have a website where FAQs would be posted and a separate Blog would be set so people can post comments and concerns.

Anybody ever try anything like this and had it succeed or fail?

Thanks in advance

Fred,
I hear you on all points. We have a committee that is feeding the information to the Marketing company. The idea is that we hope to have a interactive website that can be updated regularly with the facts and answer any questions that HOs have without having to do many additional mailings.

I feel like the attorney who may have real concerns about the possible liabilities but is also trying to strongly recommend us using her services and not the Marketing guy. I am hoping someone has done something like this in the past and we can learn from their experience.

$50 per house for a mailing? Simply make a webpage and send post cards with the address for more information. Good grief your wasting tons of money....

Web page - free
Post card - $134 for 400 houses (print off home printer)

Sheeeeesh....

Steve,
I know you have been on the site for a long time but you should know that the entire CC&R document has to be sent out to every homeowner along with all of the ballot information like any other election. Printing and mailing costs do add up. We sent follow up mailers to homeowners and even paid our PM who is the inspector of elections to go door to door and still only got a little over 50%. At the time last year we also had sent out the Bylaws with some changes and that is the only thing that passed.

I am totally with you regarding the website. The attorney is saying that this may be viewed as a one side site and the other side can make the association pay for a site dedicated to the anti vote.

Wish I could offer some help based on experience but can't, Mark.

Our 14y.o original CC&Rs (for sou high rise) are in the same shape as yours and are 120 pages long. Our Board has not wanted to update them and we were unsuccessful getting enough approval votes to even rewrite our bylaws, which only require 50% + one votes approving. We did achieve about 85% of what we needed, but the Board didn't want to pay to send them out again to the non-voters.

What % do you need to approve your rewritten CC&Rs? Did your HOA attorney do the work to update them and you have that expense too? Or did she just write a cover sheet?

It's not unusual to need to mail the changes, ballots, etc. out 2-3 times, but I believe you only need target those who didn't vote. If you try diligently, you then, as i imagine you know, can petition the court to approved a revision. One of our neighboring high rises succeed with that approach.

Without much knowledge at all, I'm thinking that it's not a good idea to send it out again with the request to vote on a gate. I guess you're sending out the latter because it'll require a raise in dues of more than 5% or because it's just good practice to do so?

So, Fred seems to make the most sense to me. But our HOA is 34% tenant occupied so attendance at a meeting would be slim. You'd can learn who DID vote and you make find it was mainly owner-occupants anyway. I assume the ballots are unopened?

I'd say with your attorney's guidance, try to re-write the main points clearly as you can as Fred suggests I do think she's right that if the Board spend funds on a marketing type to promotes the Board's opinion, you'd have to grant opponents the same service. That's how I understand it per Davis-Stirling election statutes.

$20K for printing and mailing is WAY out of line. The responsibility of marketing the changes is the Association and the law firm handling the re-write. Your PM, if you have one should have been instrumental in getting it marketed to your homeowners.

No, I'm not aware that CCR must be sent out to every homeonwer. Never heard of that. Typically an HOA records it with the county clerk and it becomes public record.

Personally our HOA would notify the homeowner that there are new CCR's with a postcard (as a courtesy) and provide a link to a PDF on our web site or tell them how to view it at the county clerk registry web site.

Does your town, state, federal mail you a copy of the new laws as they are enacted? Course not. They are also public record.

DUUUUUUH

This attorney is only lining their pockets with such advice. Who exactly can make the association pay for an anti vote website? Is that not up to you and your HOA? If you can't get enough people interested for a quorum, I would doubt any of them would put that type of effort into an anti campaign. I'm sorry but that is poor advice. She or he has you where they want you, and that is to sit back, relax and keep paying me.

BTW, your docs state you have to include a copy of the docs with every mailing?