By: Melissa Guyott, CMCA, AMS, PCAM - Ponderosa Community Management I’ve donated countless hours in various volunteer positions throughout the years. I’ve been a PTA president, served on professional councils, coached a little league fastpitch team and even did a tour as an elected city councilperson. In each of these scenarios, I had a personal agenda or spark of madness that led me to serve. With my own point of reference and almost two decades of non-profit Board management, I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes a good governing body tick. Let’s say an involved and engaged homeowner decides to take the leap and serve for the Board. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, this new leader begins to learn about the business of running their association. In this fictional scenario, our new Association leader has even taken the time to read their governing documents, review contracts and ask questions about the association’s financial health. Our new community volunteer begins to become dismayed when their questions are answered with, “I don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager.” As more questions are posed, the same answer is returned, “We don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager.” “When is our next board meeting?”
We don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager. “When does our insurance renew?” We don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager. “Are our dues increasing next year?” We don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager. “What do our CC&Rs say about street parking?” We don’t know. We’re waiting on our manager. Not only is this new community volunteer receiving this response, but homeowners are receiving a similar message. A homeowner sends a board member an email saying, “Our manager sent me a violation letter for my garbage can and I am so mad. I’ve called the management office three times today and no one has called me back. It’s Friday, and now I’m going to have to wait all weekend to get a response. I hate that I always must leave a voicemail.” It may be tempting for the board member (who directed management to send the violation letter) to respond with, “Oh I know. They are the worst! The board keeps talking about changing companies.” Now consider how a homeowner’s relationship with “our manager” is impacted by these responses. More importantly, a community leader must ask themselves, “Am I acting in the best interest of my organization, fulfilling my role as the fiduciary of the organization and performing my duty of service with this answer?” Further, it may be hard to do, but a board member must take a moment of self-reflection and ask themselves what role they are playing in this scenario. The relationship between a Board and its management partner must be collaborative, supportive, and professional. While a community association manager can be retained to defray the workload usually assigned to an Association’s elected body, they have very little autonomous authority. Placing blame on an absentee or underperforming management partner may shift the blame momentarily, but it is short sided. Community Association managers work at the pleasure and the direction of the Board. Your manager is not the “boss” of the Board and cannot mandate involvement or participation by a community leader. Entering contracts, binding insurance policies, adopting budgets and amending governance are actions that can only be taken by a Board. While management may be directed to take certain steps to support these efforts, management cannot be the catalyst that drives new initiatives. While a Board can assign projects to its management partner, ask the manager to do research and provide data, it must be the Board who ultimately oversees, drives, and ensures this delegation is being accomplished in a manner that meets the board’s expectations. A strong board has their manager’s back, and a strong manager supports and advocates for their board. If you are a board volunteer reading this right now and you’ve grown frustrated with the service you’re receiving from your management partner, commiserating with a neighbor, or engaging in destructive gossip won’t magically fix the situation. Instead, ask yourself the four questions I opened with. Do you know when the next board meeting is scheduled, which agent writes the association’s master policy or the current balance of your operating account? When was the last time you sat down to review section ten of your Association’s covenants? Did your taxes get filed? If deadlines and expectations are not communicated, enforced, and revisited often, your manager may not know you’re waiting on them. In the example I opened with, this disengaged board was complicit in any operational deficiencies by simply sitting back and blaming management. I would ask the board of this fictional association, “If you’ve delegated these very important tasks to management and they are not getting done, what is the plan?” As Harvard Business School professor Robert Anthony once said, “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”
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