As many of us finalize plans to spend Thanksgiving with family and friends, it’s easy to get caught up in the stress of travel or last-minute grocery shopping, but we also should take some time to reflect, feel grateful for those who have had an impact on our personal, professional, and volunteer lives, and celebrate this year’s accomplishments, big and small.
CAI values the commitment of community association volunteers, community managers, and the business partners who help make the communities they serve better each day. We are grateful for all the hard work you do to make community associations the preferred places to call home.
The volunteer board members and committee members, in particular, deserve some special recognition. They play a critical role in making community associations vibrant and attractive places to live. Finding, motivating, directing, and maintaining volunteers’ interest, however, are challenging tasks. Thanking them for their efforts can go a long way, and now is the perfect time to do so.
As for me, I’m thankful for the amazing team that I get to work with every day. No matter how many times I say, “thank you” and “great job,” I know it’s not enough. I’m thankful to work for a CEO who shares my storytelling passion and encourages me to implement innovative (often crazy) ideas that aren’t typically used in association publishing.
This year, CAI’s communications and marketing team took the time to ask: How do we better connect and support our members and engage with our target audiences? We tried a new, simple approach that has been working to help us reach that goal.
Last March, CAI launched a digital media brand, HOAresources.com, to expose the world to the benefits of community association living. We changed our mindset and now act and think like a media organization. We have daily editorial meetings to discuss the challenges facing our members today and take action by creating, repurposing, and sharing timely and relevant content. Being relevant to our members means we must be nimble. We must write faster, create our own infographics, and produce videos to tell a story.
Some members of our team have new roles and titles. For example, we now have a news content manager, a video editor, and a digital reporter. We didn’t stop there. We set up a studio—created by turning an old office into an interview set—complete with studio lights and backdrops.
This Thanksgiving, I am taking the time to say thank you to the people that help make CAI an association of value, including my communications and marketing team. We’ve come a long way this year, and we should all be proud. Together, we are pioneering new ways for associations to connect, support, and be truly relevant to the members we serve.
