Planning HOA Community Events on a Budget

10/11/2024 (Permalink)

Connected House Models

Planning HOA Community Events on a Budget

HOA community events help homeowners feel like they are a part of their community and that they’re getting real value out of their HOA fees. Using some of your HOA budget to help foster and build a greater sense of community in your residence with fun, interesting, and engaging HOA community events, you can help attract the right homeowners and retain them for the long term.

The trick is to select affordable events that adhere to your HOA budget and organize these activities without detracting from other critical responsibilities like maintenance, repairs, and improvements.

Here are some of the most effective tips for planning HOA community events on a budget. These tips allow you to unite your community while retaining enough HOA funds to apply to those other essential items.

Consider Low-cost Community Events

HOA community events don't have to be extravagant and costly. In fact, some of the most successful activities don't cost much to offer at all. For example, you can hold events and activities like the following without making much of a dent in your HOA community budget:

1. Community yard sale
2. Charity events like auctions or runs/walks
3. Holiday celebrations
4. Community Garden
5. Outdoor movie nights or concerts
6. Farmer's markets
7. Yoga and fitness classes
8. Cooking competitions

Some of these events can even generate extra funds to pour back into your HOA budget. Others can help generate food for community members to enjoy, which helps them save money on their own budgets. Still, others cost very little to offer beyond initial set-up expenses. And if you find people in the community with talents to put on display, you can hold performances and festivals without needing to pay booking fees to hire talent for the events.

Enlist Volunteers

Speaking of volunteers, encouraging your community members to volunteer to help organize events helps save you the cost of utilizing paid staff or hiring out for those same services. Many of the homeowners in your community might possess some of the very skills and resources you need to set up a particular type of HOA community event.

What's more, many of the tasks in setting up a successful event don't require special skills but rather simply the interest and availability to participate. Therefore, before committing to paying or hiring anyone to help put on a given event, tap into the resources you already possess in the pool of folks most directly impacted by the success of these events: your HOA community members.

Good Planning

The more diligently and further in advance you plan for the community events you offer, the less likely you are to encounter unexpected costs as the event approaches. Last-minute expenses can be some of the costliest in an event budget, so taking the time well enough ahead of time to make sure you'll have everything you need on the day of the event is one of the most effective ways to ensure that the event takes the littlest bite possible out of your HOA budget.

Planning ahead can ensure the largest turnout possible at events and that you don't double-book or schedule events when other attractive alternate events are also taking place elsewhere in the area. Giving yourself enough time to prepare for an event helps get the most people involved and avoids potential challenges. Encouraging community involvement in event planning helps build community cohesion and ensure your events run as smoothly as possible, encouraging further participation in future events that continue to strengthen and build your community.

Take Into Account Community Interests and Considerations

The more members of your community attend the events you organize, the more value those events can provide to your overall community and, therefore, the fewer events you may need to organize to provide such value to your community members.

One way to attract the greatest proportion of your members to attend any event is to solicit suggestions of the types of events your community members would be most interested in participating in and attending. For example, you can take a survey to discover events that would appeal to the largest number of HOA members and give yourself the best chance of attracting a large turnout.

Shop Around

When you need vendors or suppliers to help set up an event and make it run right, you don't have to go with the first ones you find who happen to offer what you want on the date you desire. With extra due diligence, you can economize these costs to keep more of your budget available for other community wants and needs.

Shop around for the best vendors and suppliers at the best prices to serve your needs. Solicit estimates from multiple providers or encourage providers to bid on your project. Conduct your homework to find those providers who offer the greatest value for the lowest cost. Seek referrals from other local HOAs or community members.

Charge a Small Fee

While your HOA community is already paying regular dues for such benefits as community events, there are some events or aspects of events for which people may be willing to pay a small bit extra. For example, if offering child care services during an event can help enable more community members to attend an event, see if the parents in your community, or even your community, will be willing to contribute a small fee to cover those child care costs. The same goes for transportation or promotional costs, to suggest just a couple of others.

Employ Technology

Technology tools can help you plan HOA community events on a budget in several ways. You can use accounting and money-management software to help you budget your events, communication software to help keep all your participants and community members in the loop and participating in the planning and success of the events, and scheduling software to help organize the events at dates and times when the most number of community members will be available to participate.

Health and Safety of Community Spaces

When planning HOA community events on a budget, you need to consider where these events are to take place and ensure that those spaces are clean and safe for people to gather. That includes taking care of any necessary tasks, ranging from remediation of water and mold damage to repairs and reconstruction.

SERVPRO® can help ensure the health and safety of all your community spaces by providing essential amelioration services, including fire, water, and mold remediation and structural reconstruction. Make every HOA community a success, no matter your budget.

Whether it’s certain repairs, improvements, or water damage restoration Arcadia HOA members need to hold successful, affordable events, and SERVPRO can help. So, contact us today and start fostering a greater sense of community in your HOA.