You’re an HOA board member. Driven by your passion for a harmonious and successful neighborhood, you devote countless hours to unpaid, volunteer HOA management. Whether you're a treasurer or secretary or even something in between, this is no easy task. You do everything from accounting to property management to vetting contractors to effectively communicating news to your neighborhood residents—all without earning a single penny for it!
It’s no wonder that some HOA board members have a fair bit of pride surrounding their jobs. This is normal and completely warranted. You work hard, and you absolutely should take pride in it! We at Gassen, as a provider of property management services, know exactly how difficult working on an HOA board can be, and we’re here to say that you deserve to feel a sense of accomplishment and self-respect when you look at the thriving neighborhood you’ve helped to create.
However, as stated above, serving on a board is hard. Nobody is born with the exact skill set that is needed to do it, so there’s bound to be a couple of learning experiences along the way. One particularly difficult, yet crucial skill that some HOA board members might struggle with is asking for help. We’ve got some advice to make doing so easier below.
Asking for Help Does Not Equate to Weakness
If you currently serve on a board and are overwhelmed with tasks, you might feel as though you are admitting defeat in asking for help from your fellow board members. Perhaps you think that you might lose their respect, or that it shows that you aren’t dedicated to your community. Maybe you think your community and fellow board members might outright scorn you!
All of these lines of thinking couldn’t be further from the truth. By asking for help, you are putting the neighborhood before your pride and placing yourself in a vulnerable position by acknowledging your human limits. For the sake of your community, you’re willing to risk your ego, pride, and the knowledge that you can’t make everyone happy. What’s a bigger show of dedication and strength than that?
That being said, you shouldn’t prioritize the approval of others. Instead, good HOA boards will understand that members and residents have a whole life outside of their community-related responsibilities, and they should meet that idea with sympathy rather than disdain. At the very least, they should consider the help of property management services or online property management if the board is consistently struggling to share responsibilities.
Contact Gassen for HOA Help
We’re an Eden Prairie provider of property management services that would be happy to shoulder any extra work your board needs to be done. Give us a call now at 952-922-5575 to see how we can help your neighborhood reach its full potential.