How to Make Your HOA Feel Like a Community

If you’re like me, you want to live in a home surrounded by pleasant neighbors, people you can call friends or trust to watch your house while you’re away on vacation.  In today’s mobile device, texting, culture, this is becoming a greater challenge within our subdivisions. Residents live in close proximity to their neighbors, but don’t interact as they once did ten, twenty years ago.  Neighbor interaction used to take place in their living rooms, then moved to the front porch, and now it’s through texting.  Since the mission of a professional association management service is to help transform your neighborhood into a true, thriving community, we thought it prudent to offer a few strategies for an HOA Board to deal consider during 2015.

Here are five keys to engaging your community:

1.      Host a community event.  So how can you as a board member transform your neighborhood association into a true interactive community? One idea is to host a community wide barbecue, pot luck, or ice cream social.  Especially during the warm days of summer when people love to get outdoors.  By holding a community gathering, you can truly bring the homeowners outside and together.

2.      Sponsor a neighborhood clean-up day.  Another idea that does double duty for your subdivision is to have a board-sponsored neighborhood cleanup day. By hosting a cleanup day, you are bringing the community together in a charitable way, and you are helping to make your neighborhood sparkle with cleanliness!

3.      Offer holiday decorating contests.  Around many of the holidays, the association could host a Christmas or Halloween party for the children in the community.  We all know children are excellent at makings friends, and they tend to turn their friend’s parents into their parents’ friends, so that brings people together.

4.      Arrange for speakers.  As a Board member, you can also advertise speakers at board or annual meetings to discuss topics like neighborhood watch, insurance, or home protection. Finally, try starting a book exchange club, initiating a sewing activity, a family movie night or hosting a board game night at the clubhouse if your community has one.

5.      Provide various routes of communication.  In today’s busy world, product recognition is a marketable item.  People have certain routines for scanning information, so posting similar messages on a variety of routes will increase your recognition.  A coordinated attack should include newsletters, posters, fliers, statement stuffers, website postings, social media, emails, text messages, voice mail, street signs are some of the more popular ways to ensure effective communication.

Bottom line, anything that encourages neighbors to get to know one another is great for building that sense of community.  For more great ideas, go to www.gomgm.comor call (208) 846-9189.