James Pfeiffer of ACCU outlines five steps for new HOA board members: create an annual plan, understand your governing documents, get formal education through CAI or your management company, give clear direction to your manager, and verify funds before bidding projects using rough order of magnitude estimates.
Hey everybody, James Pfeiffer with ACCU here, and in today's video we're gonna be talking about what it is to become a board member. A few different scenarios here. Perhaps you're new to a community and you want to be on the board. Perhaps your board is looking for members to serve, or perhaps you're being volunteered or voluntold that you need to service your community and your board and you don't know what the next step is. So you have come to the right place. And side note, right off the bat, it's very difficult to be a board member, but we're gonna try and make it as easy as possible. So I got 5 steps for you to follow today to make your job as board member much easier. All right, step number 1, annual plan. I cannot stress this enough. Now, if you're an ACCU member, I'm going to go ahead and say that you're familiar with how we set up the calendar to kick off tickets to make sure that things happen throughout the year. But what's most important is you may be a brand new board member who's coming onto the board and you could be saying, great, I'm really happy to be here and volunteer my time. Where do I go to get my information? If there is an annual plan that's done every single year so a board member can go in and see what's expected of them, what's expected of the management company. It gives a clear demarcation of who's responsible for what and what's going to be expected of you throughout the year. All right. Number 2, it's to understand your governing documents. Now, I get it. I have read my fair share of governing documents in the last 21 years. And you know what? I actually like it now because I understand it a lot more now that I have 21 years of experience. But I tell you what, when I first started reading governing documents, it will put you to sleep. But it's really important as a board member that you read and understand the covenants of a community that you are responsible for enforcing. The next step is to take time to review your association's governing documents. Number 3, a little bit more of a tricky one, and this has to do with education. Education can be seen in a lot of different ways. I mean, really, you could pass your annual education off as, well, we wrote a newsletter, we made sure that we sent it out, but that's not the type of education that I'm talking about here. To take a proactive approach to making sure that you get an education, learn your resources. Number 1, Community Association Institute, CAI. They're a great resource for education. Number 2, your management company more than likely has some form of education that they do throughout the year. Perhaps they do quarterly education, monthly education, and they are inviting their board members. Please take the time to attend. They're taking the time to try and put it together. Your attendance goes a long way. And number 3, a law firm. Many of the law firms in all the states do provide additional education to their members, whether they be community association managers or board members, take time and take them up on their education opportunities. It's going to help you in the long run. Education. Number 4 is make sure that you're going to be willing and prepared to give your community manager clear direction. Of course, you're going to be relying on your community manager to bring you information for to make a decision, but it is incumbent on you as the board member to make a decision and give clear guidance to your manager so they can carry it out for you. I can't stress it enough. Number 4, make sure you give clear guidance to your community association manager. Number 5, I would say that this is probably one of the top of my list, and it's proof of funds. Before asking your community association manager to go out to get a bid, going into being a board member, understand that your first obligation is to make sure that an association has proof of funds, funds in the bank account to be able to perform jobs for the community before you ask them to go get a bid. If you need to understand how much something's gonna cost, well, I don't know, is this gonna be a $100,000 job or is this gonna be a $1 million job? In that case, go ahead and get a ROM, a rough order of magnitude. Have a contractor or somebody qualified come out, take a look and say, you're looking probably at a $100,000 job. Then you can determine, all right, we need to either raise $100,000 or we have that in the bank account that we can commit to get this job done. That is gonna help you get things done in your community and you're gonna make contractors a lot happier. So that is our 5 things that you're going to need to know going into being a board member. And until next time, my name is James Pfeiffer, and I look forward to bringing you additional educational content.
