Boost Owner Turnout for Annual Meetings

“Attend my HOA’s annual meeting” doesn’t often turn up on an owners’ top 10 list of things to do.

Our association of some 1200 homes in Frisco faces the challenge so many HOAs do—how to entice owners to attend their yearly meetings where we must conduct neighborhood business—board elections, budget discussion, and other concerns.

In the past, we’ve tried building attendance by inviting local officials, such as the mayor and city council members, to appeal to a variety of neighborhood interests.   We’ve offered incentive drawings, awarding a lucky owner to have his assessments paid for half a year.  Giveaways of a tree or flowers donated by the landscaper --nice, but only 30-50 homeowners would show up.

Offer a convenient service to owners - what’s in it for me?  Scratch something off my To Do list!    We tried a new approach this year by tying it in with a drive to educate owners about new pool and fitness center rules and to reactivate all pool cards for the coming pool season.  To sweeten the deal, we discounted the fee owners pay to obtain extra pool cards, if they did so at the meeting.   Owners had to sign forms acknowledging they had read the new pool rules.  They could drop these off at the meeting, and reactivate their cards at the same time.

Try a change of venue -  We held the meeting at our local elementary school to handle what we expected to be a larger crowd.  An added benefit, the school offered better acoustics, AV equipment and meeting space than we have available in our clubhouse.  Plus, the mayor and assistant superintendent of schools attended as guests.

Volunteer Tables – We also had a chairperson from each committee present to educate owners about volunteering.

Special Project Boards – We had display boards set up that showed plans of all future major projects surrounding our community with timelines for completion.

When the Thursday evening of the meeting arrived, cars started filling the parking lot.  We were thrilled when 200 owners turned out for the meeting.  What brought them in?  Some were there to learn more about the assessment increase; others had children who would be attending the new elementary school and wanted to hear from the assistant superintendent. Hands down, the long queues at the pool card tables told us this was the right place, and the right time to get folks to turn in their forms and activate their pool cards.

Owners left feeling they had crossed off an important task on their To Do lists—get pool card activated, learned of volunteer opportunities, plus they learned more about their community and made new friends!!

Debbie Pasha is the Board President of Lone Star Ranch HOA in Frisco, TX.