Strategic Planning for Your HOA Community
Having a strategic plan is different than simply having a general plan for matters within your HOA. Strategic plans have the ability to unify a community under a central goal, while also making long-term planning easier and more organized for board members.
Ensuring that your community has an up-to-date strategic plan is one of the best steps you can take toward establishing a clear direction for your community to grow.
Knowing Your Community
The first step toward establishing an effective strategic plan is knowing what your community wants and needs. Knowing your demographic, your association’s budget, and what you already have are three important bases to build upon. Different communities will need different services or prefer different amenities. Make sure that you take into account what your community members would prioritize above all when creating your strategic plan.
Finding Purpose
Every community is unique, and those idiosyncrasies are a huge factor in what makes residents want to live in your community as opposed to somewhere else. Having a central purpose is an important shared foundation to any community. Once everyone agrees on what they want to achieve as a group, taking steps forward becomes much easier and more unified.
Setting a Timeline
The biggest difference between having a plan and having a strategic plan is having a timeline and a way to measure your progress. Strategic plans will include clear checklists of things to be accomplished, and when. This makes it easier to plan for and can also save money by allowing you to get obstacles out of the way in advance.
Refining Over Time
A strategic plan is not something that can be put together in one board meeting. Having an overall plan for your community is something that can take months to fully flesh out. A good strategic plan will continue to evolve over the course of your entire community’s lifetime. Don’t rush it; allow the time it takes to put it together to present your community with different questions and scenarios to address within the strategic plan.
Related: Strategic Planning in-depth definiton
A strategic plan takes concentrated effort to create, but it is an investment in efficiency for your community that will pay off hugely on the back end. Take the time necessary to organize everyone’s hopes and plans for your shared community, and you will soon find plans coming together much more effectively. For more help managing your HOA community, contact Spectrum Association Management today for a free quote.
