Planning For Improvements In Your Association

As the end of the year approaches, board members often start to plan for the upcoming year.  These plans focus on improvements that benefit the membership and strengthening the financial health of the association.  Prioritizing these plans can be a struggle due to demands on time and money.

 

Often the association's membership is unaware of many of the challenges and plans of the board.  This is not necessarily due to lack of communication. These plans could be in the early stages of discussion and the specific details are too unknown to share with the members. However, it can still be a good idea to post plans under consideration on the association's website. This enables members to help develop the plan by volunteering their time and providing insight.

 

 

While the board will have their own ideas for areas of improvement, it is a good idea to ask the members for additional ideas. This keeps the members involved in the process and may highlight some areas the board did not realize need improving.  

 

Asking for feedback from the membership also instills a feeling that the members are part of the association. This involvement is likely to result in more projects being accomplished and in a variety of areas.  Each membership association is made up of people with diverse backgrounds and talents. The more an association can focus this energy to help improve the association the more successful the association will be for its members.

 

 

A majority of members are likely to want to help accomplish the planned improvements. But, limited time is a factor that keeps projects from moving forward. Assigning more members to a project will spread out the workload and create peer pressure. Therefore, members are more likely to follow through on their assigned tasks. 

 

It is also the board's responsibility to communicate these projects and the progress to the other members of the association.  Creating a projects page on the association's website will help organize this information and give the members a single place to go for the latest updates.  The website can also be used to send mass emails to the members reminding them the information is available online.  Effective tools and a clear plan will help any association accomplish their improvements.