HOA Newsletter

Hi Jim, Search this forum for: newsletter cost
You will find a few interesting topics. It will also be interesting to see other's experiences here.

JimM10.........Our HOA sends out montly newsletters to all members....They have the upcoming events in it...the minutes from the previous monthly BOD meeting, articles of interest concerning the community...times of any upcoming committee meetings.. birth announcements, deaths, illnesses , things for sale etc....... It seems to be pretty popular and they have been doing it for years...I am not sure of the cost involved, as the secretary in the office puts it together, and we have bulk mail price for USPS... I know in our household we look forward to recieving to be sure all is on track...We double check the minutes against notes taken at meeting and IF there are errors in the reporting BEFORE they ( BOD ) approve the minutes for the prior meeting at the next meeting it is brought to their attention....They ( BOD ) are thankful for this as after all they are human ? and can make mistakes..... I think that newsletters are worht the costs in my opinion just for the fact it keeps folks in the know.....LindaC3

We have a monthly newsletter that is hand delivered to each door. It is put together by a newletter committee with articles written by them and others solicited in the HOA. It has all the community news; the committees, and what they are up to, the usual birth, deaths, birthdays and anniversaries, articles from different members from the community about their different professions, decorating ideas, jokes, scores from golf tournaments and bowling. The first page is the letter from the board and the last is the monthly calendar, with all the committee dates on it. This works very well because you do not have to call to find out when there is a meeting of a certain committee.

Our newsletter is 8 1/2 x 11 glossy with approximately 20 pages and costs us about $1,300 per month. Local advertising offsets about 1/2 the cost.

Does anyone have an example of a HOA newsletter? One that I can bring up on the Internet to see different types/styles/etc? Thanks in advance....

JimM10,

Our association isn’t mandatory to produce a newsletter, however I've (Vice President) personally written several newsletters. We (the board) were distributing them into mailboxes, when I had read an article about the possibility of being sued (by a homeowner) for placing "mailable" content in a mailbox without postage. The homeowner COULD notify the USPS, who would identify the board as the offenders of such criminal act and possible be accessed hundreds upon thousand is fines and court costs. It would be considered a federal offense, which was something (as a volunteer board member) I didn’t want to be concerned with.

Once I realized the possibility of a potential law suit. I addressed my concern to the other board members and we proceeded to mail the newsletter at which point we try to fill it with as much important information as possible. As a homeowner (prior to being a board member) of this association I felt as though I had some very good idea and/or suggestions of what I felt residents would like to read about.

I have “pick-up” many useful tips when creating a newsletter I would like to share with you, many of which I received from posts off this forum. I would suggest using the same size font (10 or 12) in the main context. Use size 14,16 for titles/sub-titles. I ALWAYS had the board members included on every newsletter always in the same spot, with email address and web-site address. Those who read the newsletter began to recognize who their elected board members were. It didn’t take long for members of the community to put a name with a face.

I listed (as previously posted) anniversary, birthdays, birth announcements as well as holidays, up-coming meetings, community events, day light saving time reminders and lawn care tips. I felt there was a tremendous amount of information, many resides were unaware of, to fill the newsletter with information that wasn’t relevant to the association. I felt that the space and time were extremely valuable in every newsletter. Therefore I limited the "fluff" and "fillers".

I always, thoroughly explained various convents of our governing documents. Many of which were recent violations found in our community for that particular month, like reminders, street parking, lawn care, pressure washing (driveways, house etc) and occasionally, I’ve quoted city ordinance to further express the severity of these violations. A well inform community is a happier community and makes the boards “job” that much less stressful.

I also suggest NEVER PUTTING ARTICLES IN THE SAME SPOT IN THE NEWSLETTER. In other words, don’t always put community events on the first page (bottom left corner) switch it up that way there is a better chance that the entire newsletter will be reviewed. I ALWAYS put a calendar on the back page of the newsletter, that way when the homeowner was done reading it they could continue using it instead of throwing it away. I also had a list of import phone numbers such as police, fire, MC, animal control, poison control, etc all on the back page for easy access as well.

I’ll attempt to post regularly, to help you as much as possible, with information I have gather, through the years, much of which you may already know, some you may not.

I’m certainly glad it isn’t mandatory to produce a newsletter, weekly, monthly or even quarterly for our community. However, I did and still do feel as though it is our (BOD) voice to the community and I have made every attempt to send out several bulletins (1 or 2 pagers) throughout the year at different times of the year in conjunction with other various, mandatory HOA, mailings to reduce costs.

I will continue to post information for you as I hope to address many more of your concerns. Keep us posted and if you should have any further questions, be sure to ask we are more than willing to help. I wish you much success.

Sorry for such a loooooooooong post. LOL

Chuck W.

JimM10,

The newly elected board have been gathering email addresses, which will be used to email the newsletter. We can because our governing document don’t say we must produce a newsletter, yours may, you would need to verify. Many of these email addresses were gather from existing pool forms, and other various HOA forms of communication.

Our associations email address also collected many address due to homeowner complaints, concerns and some homeowners specifically specified they would prefer to have the newsletter emailed to them, thus resulting in having their email address. It has taken several years to accumulate all that we have and yet there are still a needed. We will (once the newsletter is created) send it to those whose addresses we have from our web-site, as a PDF file.(to be downloaded)

I’ve enclosed a link I’ve used to down load templates. There are many to choose from, all of which cost you absolutely nothing.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx
I hope this helps.

Best of luck. Keep in touch
Chuck W.

Charles: Thanks again.. I went to that site you posted... the Microsoft site and I think it will be easier to work with than Publisher. Thanks again !!!!