Publishing an Association Newsletter

This post will look at some of the methods, benefits and issues of publishing an association newsletter. One might think that publishing a newsletter is a straightforward thing, but it may not be. It has been said that "Anything can be resolved in communications." Nevertheless, there are differing opinions about the value and purpose of an homeowners association newsletter.

Boards have a variety of fiduciary duties and differing perspectives. I've always considered the newsletter to be a vital part of communications with our owners, a part of board fiduciary duties and have acted accordingly. That is not a universal position among board members. In fact, providing a newsletter article may simply be another chore for a board member.

One thing to be aware of is board members can't be made to write articles or to be in communications if they are unwilling. Board members choose the technology they will make available for association use. Not everyone on our board has agreed about the importance of our newsletter and there have been differences of opinion about what to write. Should the newsletter be a business document? Or should it be a social calendar? Or something of both?  A very few owners have chimed in from time to time and stated their preference. While such guidance is appreciated, owners are not fiduciaries and don't have such responsibilities.

I suggest taking care of association business be the priority for boards. After all, our non-professional boards spend a lot of money collected from our owners. Boards determine owner fees and how much to save via reserves. They spend each and every dollar. Let's not forget all of that future planning and coordination with the City of Wheaton, etc.

I also suggest the use of the newsletter to communicate the business to the owners. In a well-run association after the business is handled everything else can fall into place and usually will.

However, boards have differing agendas, as do the owners who elect them. The newsletter is an opportunity for informing owners of these differing perspectives.  Of course, if board members were completely honest and forthright, some of us might never be elected. Some owners also only want good news and they will find a "good news" group to coddle them and provide it.

It is impossible for a newsletter to be all about "good news"and nothing else. That is not the real world. However, it doesn't need to be doom and gloom, either. Back in 2008-2010 our new board attempted to shift to a social newsletter with articles about England, certain neighbors and so on. They didn't have a lot of good news to share as delinquencies increased, there were foreclosures and the financial future for the association was gloomy. They didn't have a solid grip on the finances or the maintenance backlog. A social approach is easier to write about than tackling the problems head on and keeping owners informed of progress. Nevertheless, the December 2008 newsletter included delinquency numbers and reserves.  It was a good attempt at balance, but it didn't go over well with all owners.  Here's what was revealed in that newsletter:

• Our financial reserves totaled about $276,000 but had no funding for streets. Yet our major street, Lakecliffe Blvd, was failing. 
• Our delinquences had increased in two years from $5,000 to more than $30,000.

The above was not good news for owners. There must have been some negative feedback to the board. For whatever reasons in the midst of the "great recession" the newsletter shifted to a social one.  Such a shift doesn't solve any problems. However, if owners feel better they may be inclined to re-elect boards.

Another approach is simply about "looking good". The newsletter at BLMH sometimes occured to be "window dressing."  This is somewhat like our property street entries from Briarcliff Blvd. Over the years a lot of association money has been spent to beautify these, and it was considered to be good advertizing.  So too for a newsletter. However, if carried to an extreme one might argue this is misleading.

Nevertheless, it was possible to insert business data into the newsletter. Boards generally have an interest in presenting factual data to owners. Boards may have difficulting getting that data into a form that can be printed or finding someone to do the work. Boards do have difficulty in presenting "bad news" to owners. Some prefer to subject owners to the "slow death" of large annual fee increases rather than writing about the risks inherent in maintenance backlogs, long term solutions and potential special assessments. It does take some courage.

The shift from a "good news" periodical to one containing reality can be particularly difficult for a board. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and may be facilitated in associations by boards comprised of cowards.

The board of 2012 that followed the board of 2008-2011 continued a shift to a more realistic newsletter perspective while recognizing some of the issues and presenting solutions.

• Being responsible requires not only writing about the issues, but also providing insights into how the association is going to go about dealing with those issues.

When preparing a newsletter I think it is reasonable to consider that owners are just that, "owners." They aren't apartment dwellers who pay a monthly fee for the privilege of a space and move on in a year or so. Owners do have responsibilities to the association. They purchased as a choice. They made a significant financial investment. Boards should honor these decisions.

• A viable, factual newsletter serves "owners" and any renters, while informing all. It may improve board accountability. That's the approach I prefer. But others have strongly disagreed.

Creating a Newsletter - Tools
When the webmaster quit and some on the board also walked off I continued to publish the newsletter using Microsoft Word. To create charts I used Microsoft Excel. I also used a photo editing product "Corel PC Paintshop Pro".

To print the newsletter for the website and transmit it to our printer I used "Corel PDF Fusion" which produces smaller pdf files than the print function of Word.  I've done so since May 2011 and  I continue to use these tools to this day. Of course, I have upgraded some of these products since 2011.

• Document: Microsoft Word
• Spreadsheets and financial charts: Microsoft Excel
• Photographs: Digital Camera and Smart Phone
• Photograph, charts and JPG creation, cropping and file re-sizing: Corel PC Paintbrush Pro
• PDF file printing: Corel PDF Fusion
• Document transmission to board members, management and the printer: Email
• Foundation: A high speed internet connection.

I could have used MS Publisher, but because many people don't have that program available I decided MS Word was the better choice. I share the Word documents with others including management and in recent years our Maintenance Director took on the challenge of creating the newsletters.

Using MS-Word is straightforward for a newsletter, and I did create a template using a variety of text boxes. Photos, text and charts can be easily copied or dropped into these boxes. Box sizes and shapes can be changed as necessary. Boxes can be added to accomodate a larger number of articles, or deleted. Box backgrounds can be white, other colors or transparent. Boxes can have borders or not. I avoid the curleques preferring to save the space for text. The newsletter is printed in B&W. Photos are in color. To see the colors one goes to the association website and opens the newsletters there or downloads to their PC.

I use the paintshop software to edit photos taken with smart phone and digital cameras, or the charts created with Excel spreadsheets. Photos are generally recent and timely. I frequently change the spreadsheet charts to jpg files which are easier to manipulate.  This allows me to crop photos and charts, and I can edit the file size. Overlay text can be added. The smaller files can then be dropped into text boxes and the resulting word document isn't unweildy in size. For example, the newsletter for August, 2016 including the photos was a Word file of 307 kb. Easy to manipulate and copy from PC to PC, or via email.

Newsletters are usually four pages in size, and there is the occasional insert.

Creating the Newsletter - Collaborative Tools
If one chooses there are collaborative, online tools available. One of these is Google Docs.

These could be used to create documents, spreadsheets, and so on. Of course, putting these things on the web does raise security and ownership issues.

The real problem to creating a newsletter is board willingness, skills and the internet availability of board members. In our association, simply getting board members to use email reliably has been very difficult. Asking them to use online, collaborative software is simply beyond some. In fact, it is not a requirement that board members have a cellphone, internet access or a PC.

It is a reality that some people may have no computer skills beyond word processing and some board members may not be willing to pay the monthly fee for personal internet access.

Once we have a team with the necessary tools and skills, what remains is actually putting together the newsletter. For that the duties will fall to the most skillful and the most willing. Not all board members appreciate this and some may feel technologically threatened or challenged. Some may see it as a waste of time.

It is not the role of board members to train other board members in the use of technology or to provide technology to other board members. Nevertheless I have furnished a laptop and even a digital camera to other board members. I don't think that approach serves anyone well.

Creating the Newsletter - What to Write?
In an association with 336 owners it isn't very difficult to determine what to write. I think this would apply to all homeowners associations. Each month our board members are given a packet of about 100 pages in length. The information therein and the things discussed each meeting can be the basis for newsletter articles. Our newsletters are published every other month, so the board can draw upon 200 pages of information and the content and discussion of two, 2-hour meetings. In fact, the rear page is boilerplate general information, so what board members need to generate is three pages every other month. In the typical year that's a total of 18 pages of text and part of this is the Management's report. Yet, some board members insist there is nothing to write about. That's hogwash, of course. Here's a list of possibilities:

• Projects (Planned, in progress, upcoming and the impact on owners)
• Maintenance (Maintenance issues, work underway or planned, etc.)
• Work Orders (What's going on?)
• Rules Violations (How to avoid getting into trouble with the rules, most frequent violations, rule changes,  etc.)
• Finances (Spending, reserves, fees, etc.)
• Landscaping (Issues, projects, expenditures, etc.)
• Proposals (Work under consideration while avoiding cost and vendor details)
• Calendar based items (elections, meetings, census form due dates, etc.)
• Tips to owners and residents (Winter and summer living in the association).

Alternative Tools
Some years ago I did work with another board member and installed a "freeware" wordprocessor with claimed compatibility with word files. However, that is not my preferred approach. That individual didn't want to purchase a copy of MS-Word so I had little choice. As usual, that increased the time I had to spend. In my experience these programs may not be fully compatible with Word, either.

Today, one could use Google Docs, but that isn't my preferred choice, either.  I consider anything put on the web as out of my hands, ownership and control. So too for the association. Google Docs also required good internet access. That's something all board members may not have available. Today, many may use a smart phone to access email and for web browsing. PCs may have been replaced by a tablet computer. In such situations the preparation and transmission of complex documents may be impossible.

Using Email to Participate
For those board members who are willing to participate it is easy.  Board members can create their text using the email tool of their choice.

This is sent to the "editor" (me or the Maintenance Director). The text in the email is then copied and pasted into word and formatted as necessary. Spell checking can be done using the word tools. This is the approach I have found to be the easiest if board members don't have access to MS-Word.
However, it does take additional time for those who put the newsletter together.

The Worst Approach for creating Documents
The worst is hand written notes. Yes, those have been used in our association. That approach turns the board members who assemble the newsletter into personal secretaries. It can be time consuming.

I do have a great scanner with excellent OCR software so if I am given a typewritten page I can scan it, and then convert it into a Word document. Of course this is another time consuming step, but it is less time consuming for me than typing an entire document into Word. My Scanner is a $500 tool. Most don't have something like that available to them.

Resisting Newsletter Participation
Why resistance to a newsletter? As odd as it may seem, some may want to be on the board because of the power it bestows. Power to hire and fire contractors and management. Power to run an agenda, collect money from owners and then determine how to spend it. How many of us have ever actually developed and managed a $1 million annual budget?  Boards do get to pick and choose how that money is spent. Boards get to enforce rules on their fellow owners. All of this can be a power trip.

Some may want to be on the board because it provides an opportunity to do something. Hobbies can get boring after a while and one can only watch so much "Wheel of Fortune" in a day. If one is on the board then one can camp out at the management office, etc.  If management doesn't like it, well as one board member told me "I can fire management".

Newsetters can be revealing. If we are truly honest with owners in a newsletter, they may determine what our capabilities are as well as our failings. They may not like us, or what we have failed to do. It may be in the interest of an entrenched board to keep things close and avoid providing too much information to owners. That's not in the best interest of owners, however.

I suggest boards simply view their work as work, and being of service to others, as fiduciaries. Use the newsletter to communicate and to prepare future boards, too. Play power games elsewhere.

Whatever the purpose of the newsletter, if one wants to create a newsletter the tools and approaches I have used did work well. So has the message.

Impediments to Newsletter creation
One thing to be aware of that board members can't be made to write articles or to be in communications if they are unwilling. As a principal author, I found my time monopolized by some of this, and was forced to produce a majority of articles, some with no stated author. When only two or three board members write for a newsletter, it can be a very bad signal to owners.

Using my board experience of 8 years, I can tell you that other board members can make your life difficult if you want to put together a newsletter. Some may enjoy doing so. Some authors may attempt to make it difficult as in "Okay, I'll write your damn article, but I'll make you work for it."

I concluded long ago that it was easier to write the articles than chase people who had no interest. Or to deal with underminers. So I began writing most of the newletter articles. If there is no name on an association article, then it was probably written by me.

Here are some of the techniques that have been used to avoid writing and providing newletter articles:

• Don't use technology. Even though one can go to the neighborhood public library and use the computers there, and we are within walking distance of a community college.
• Argue consistently against the newsletter, as in "No one reads it".
• Promise to write but fail to deliver.
• Write an article and submit it at the last possible moment, while demanding that no changes be made. In other words, "Make room for me and the hell with the other articles."
• Attack the editors and those who prepare the newletter if any attempt is made to fit their article into the available space: "How dare you make any changes."
• All of the above.

In my experience the newsletter has been one of the more difficult chores I've had, for a variety of reasons:

• Technical issues were never a problem, but low technical skills of board members are an impediment.
• Some board members do have limited access to such things as high speed internet, or won't use it. They may not have the tools to produce the articles. 
• Chasing board members to write is a problem. At some point people will become very angry and some may lash out at other board members. Such undermining behavior should be beyond board members, but this is the real world we live in. 
• Uncooperative board members, who prefer to be politicians and want to trade favors.
• Managing nasty or belligerent board members is always a problem.
• Calming other board members who have been verbally attacked.
• Dealing with the clique. 

The bottom line is one cannot force people to participate, even board members.

Future Newsletters
My last newsletter as a board member was published in August. The next will be determined by the new board. They may ask for assistance or they may not. They also have the option of paying management or others to do this task.  Management does have MS-Word originals of some of the newsletters I or the Maintenance Director created. Management could certainly assemble a newsletter for a board using those earlier Word documents, or could create a new one.

I'll be interested in seeing how that turns out. However, it will no longer be my responsibility.

Frankly, the newsletter has been a royal pain. It was regularly like herding cats while begging board members to do their duty or both. We have had board members who love to screw around with other board members, take their time and use it. Power mongering is what I call that.

Perhaps the above is what happens when an association has board members who would really prefer to be elsewhere but feel they are stuck on the board. Similar to  some of our owners in 2008 who failed to sell before the bottom dropped out in 2007, they may choose to make the rest of us miserable. For the power hungry, putting others through hoops can be a joy.

Newsletter Link
Here's a link to our association website and the newsletters. These span December 2008 to the present.

1. The newsletter of December 2008 was one of the first a new board produced. It followed the template of the earlier board. 
2. The Newsletter of November, 2010 contained my first article. 
3. The Newsletter of January 2011 contained a chart I prepared on spending for maintenance and operations. 
4. The May 2011 Newsletter was a new format, prepared by me with the departure of a number of board members. 
5. Since May 2011 I've been very involved in the preparation of the newsletters.

BLMH Newsletters:    http://www.blmh.org/newsletters