listservs? newsletters?

Quick question - how do all of you keep the members up on what's going on? Our board has a history of a lot of talk, but not a lot of action.

In fact, at our annual meeting earlier this week, they asked our manager to leave (before the meeting even started), reported on what an amazing job they were doing and the two members up for re-election got it - barely. They were less than honest, but they are what we have to work with now.

The roof over my condo needs to be repaired from a tree in the President's courtyard - I had to fight him for over a year even though it was damaging the roof and tearing up the foundation. Now they want to put me off in case other roofs need to be fixed - so that we don't keep paying people to come over again and again.

I can understand that - but I don't want it to turn in to another 'tree' situation. They would like to wait until there is a leak to fix it (yeah, I'm not sure why either) and will put it off if they can. I don't want it delayed 6 mths while they 'look' for other leaks.

I was thinking that if we had a community listserv (not to trash the board - but to know who has problems with the roof, lets everyone know about break ins, ideas on bettering our property, etc) then we would be able to keep up on community happenings and be more informed in general. I repeat, even though I am at odds with the Board, I wouldn't want it to be there to trash anyone.

Has anyone tried this? Did it turn hostile?

A listserv is like a group email. Members can be added or removed, but if someone replied to (for expample) [email protected], the email would be delivered to everyone, and when replied, it would also go to everyone.

We're a small complex, about 34 or 36 condos....so it wouldn't be out of control.

Our board would never pay for a website.

Lesley,

I had no idea what exactly a listserv was until just then. Thank you. If you can do the web-site thing, then more power to you. I know it is rather expensive and very time consuming to keep up to date.

I live in a community of 275 single family homes. I found it very affective to do a monthly newsletter. We deliver the newsletter (once a month) to the entire community, to avoid the expenses (like stamps, envelopes, and address labels) Being such a small condo association, you may want to consider putting together a brief newsletter informing all of the monthly news. Once you establish a template it will be rather easy. Especially, if you are consist with putting it together each and every month!

Best of luck.

It works for us, give it a try!

Chuck W.

Chuck - where did you find your template or get ideas?

List servers have been around a long time. I have subscribed to many over the years. Some are "moderated" and some are not. The moderated ones have all content reviewed before posting. Most lists require permission to join, usually from the list moderator. this limits unauthorized access, and abusive members can be banned from further postings.

A more modern example of list servers is the service from Yahoo! (and others) called Yahoo Groups. It is easy to manage, set up and operate. It's a free service.
the url is groups.yahoo.com. Check it out.

Just remember that lists like these are great for informational purposes but may not be appropriate for "official" meetings.

I have personally used yahoo groups to discuss safety-related issues with members of our HOA safety committee. It's a great way to refine the language of rule changes, prior to meeting in an "official" setting.

We have 138 homes and I have an HOA talk web site that I am initially funding myself. Later I'll ask the board to adopt it, when we have enough members signed up that we can show the site is valuable to the community. I plan to look for sponsors as soon as we get enough activity to show the sponsor that members are using the site.

The time consuming part is the initial gathering of information to place on the site. It's very easy to do, and HOA talk is very good at helping get set up. Get a couple of volunteers to gather up the documents, photos, and whatever you want to place on the site. Get someone who has Adobe that can convert some files to pdf. You want your documents, minutes, newsletters etc to be in pdf so no one can alter the files.

Editing and keeping up to date is simple. A few minutes per day on average. Perhaps 2 hours a month which included responding to the community forum. To add the minutes or newsletter only takes a few seconds.

Their price is right, and it includes the domain name registration. Their sites look professional, and that is very important. If potential home buyers find your web site, then that is the first impression of your community so you want it to be impressive.

With your own domain name, eventually you can do some optimizing of the site so that search engines will begin to pick it up and you'll get traffic from people searching the web for homes in your general area. Someone in your community should have some knowledge on how to do basic web site optimizing for search engines. I recommend using the closest domain name to your community name that you can get with a dot com url, instead of using dot net or dot org, because more people are used to using dot com.

Interesting discussion.

There are many different approaches that you can take here. But, at the end of the day, it all comes down to content. If you do not have good, appropriate, updated information, a mailing list or a website will be doomed to failure.

To answer some of the questions from the original poster, you really need to look at if a Push or Pull technology works best for you and your HOA. Through experience, I have found that using Push technology alone (listserv, groups, etc.) can cause just as many problems as they address. As an example, try getting your server whitelisted after too many AOL users in your community tag the emails as SPAM because they are just too lazy to unsubscribe. On that basis alone, I would stay away from Push as my only means for electronic communication.

So, the next thing that you need to look at is Pull. This is a little different in that the community members will need to actively go to your website and retrieve the information that they are looking for.

We have built our HOA website using a combination of Open Source systems that allow us to provide a robust information portal for our members. For those interested, we are using Joomla along with Open Realty and Community Builder to accomplish what we need. Many of you are using Community123. Their offering provides much of what we provide to our community. But, I honestly don't care for the forum function. But, it is good, easy and they offer the hand-holding that most communities will need.

Our website has two distinct sections. They are “Publicly Accessible” and “Members Only”. Here is the content in both sections:

Publicly Accessible
1. Generic community information

2. Local weather

3. Links to local information (town info, school reports, etc)

4. Units available for sale (we use Open Realty for this as it allows the unit owners to post their units, maintain the listing and they will automatically expire after a period of time if not renewed)

5. Contact information

Member Only

6. Community Calendar (this lists special events but we also use it to inform the community about some of the HOA restrictions. Example, holiday decorations can only be put up 30 days before the holiday and must be taken down no later than 10 days after. So, we note that November 25th is the first day outside Christmas decorations can go up and they must be taken down by January 5th)

7. Governing documents. All of our docs are available to search. They also can be downloaded via pdf. This allows a unit owner to easily research what is allowed or not allowed. Also, it provides them a way of providing the proper documents to the buyers in the event they sell their unit.

8. Discussion Forums. We have two main forums. There is a general forum where owners can discuss items that concern them. There is also a private forum where the Board holds discussions pertaining to items before them. *A note on forums. I personally believe that a HOA must provide this function to the community. But, it should be restricted access so the discussions can be held “behind closed doors”. If you don't set up a private vehicle for discussion, rest assured that someone will do so by using Yahoo groups or some other instrument. You don't need any bickering to be aired publicly or possibly turn up in a Google search. That could have an adverse impact on people considering a purchase in your community.

9. Newsletter. Our latest newsletter that was sent to the community is available online. Also, the editors and contributors to the newsletter use the site for the submission, modification and approvals of the content for the upcoming newsletters.

First, Thanks to those of you making postive comments on our website service.

This is a great discussion. It points out that there are many good technical options and each community can have their needs met in various ways.

There is also much talk of website usage, time commitments and updating content frequently to make a website successful. I agree that to get the most out of the Internet you need fresh content, interactive discussions and other feedback features.

However, some Boards get discouraged thinking that unless they can commit to a high level of interactive involvement (posting content, answering questions, etc), then they should just do without a website. I would like to offer another view.

We have seen through our customers that some boards are very involved and encourage open communication as often as possible. Due to various constraints, other boards prefer a more structured approach where communication occurs at more official times and the website is used as a secure reference library and a way for the Board to email info to the members.

Every situation is different and there is no one 'right' way. Some factors to consider are community size, board size and time commitment.

Think of it this way: What if a community went from no website to one that just offered a secure way to provide current CCRs, rules, general info, etc. It's only updated every 1-3 months when new meeting minutes or a newsleter is published. It allows the board to email members with important info, but has no other forums or feedback features. The members only access it a few times a year to check a schedule, rule, etc. Even that basic level of information with lower usage is a great benefit to the community. It's much better than not having a website at all and the time commitment is minimal.

The point is this: Even if a board does not want to commit the time to develop a high usage website with 2-way communication, they can still offer a great benefit to their community with a basic one.

However, as Paul pointed out, security is very important. Items like meeting minutes should not be posted on a public website. Even the basic websites should have security with members-only access.

Thanks to everyone for all the great discussion here.