How to Build Community in Your Condo or Co-op

From gatherings to group chats, our ideas will make you ask, “Will you be my neighbor?”?

When building up the community in a coop or condo, there are some common and very effective tools that a co-op board or condo board can use. But first, let’s talk about building a community in general.

Like all other aspects of my life, I spend a lot of time building relationships and my community.

I have been networking for over a decade now. I started networking as part of Adrian Miller’s A’s Net and belonged to a wonderful BNI group where I perfected my networking skills and built tons of amazing relationships. I just joined Executive Association of New York, a great group of business owners, with a heavy concentration in the construction field. This is fantastic for me as we need great contractors in many fields including elevators, fa?ade engineers and contractors, HVAC installers and many more for our clients.

My husband and I also belong to one of the many private social clubs in New York. It holds all kinds of events, and it involves lots of opportunities to mix and mingle, play sports and games, and staying educated on all kinds of topics. My amazingly preceptive niece, at the age of 17, described our club back to me as - “it’s basically an after-school program for adults.”??

Years ago, I decided that it was time to give back to my local community, which I did by co-founding the East 72nd Street Neighborhood Association. I also volunteered to work on the board of election polls, on the census held by New York Regional, and by joining the NYPD for a while as a crossing guard keeping “my” kids safe when arriving at and leaving school.

I recently read Grant Cardone’s book “The 10X Rule,” where he talked about “omnipresence.” On this topic he said that to gain influence, you need to be everywhere, in all places, at all times. When I read this, I thought to myself – Grant Cardone is talking about me ??

Back to building the community in your coop or condo, here are some of our suggestions for all coop and condo board members (and residents too!) out there:

1. Committees: Ask volunteers to join committees in the areas with which their interest aligns. Residents often want to volunteer in areas in which they have a personal interest. Nobody is interested in joining the fa?ade repair committee, the largest expense in a NYC apartment building after the real estate taxes. Residents leave the fa?ade repair safety program (FISP) for the coop board to deal with. Common committees include garden committee, decorating committee, communications committee, and green or sustainability committee.
2. Social Events: Organize occasional social events for residents to mix and mingle and get to know each other. These are also a great place for coop and condo board members to be part of and get known by the community as just regular people. We often hear that boards are keeping to themselves, which is quite understandable since most residents come to them with complaints, not with praise. Social events, especially with Q&A, makes board members more approachable and likable. Who wants to complain to people they like? The holidays are always a great time to hold events, as are retirement parties for beloved staff members. Parties can be something as simple as wine and cheese in the lobby to a roof top social, if the building has a usable roof top.
3. Newsletters: Write occasional newsletters updating residents on what’s going on in the building and what the coop or condo board is working on. This can be handled by committee, a volunteer in the building, or the board. We highly recommend that it is in collaboration with the board so that it can add what is going on in the building as well as approving the final edits. Common newsletters are quarterly or annual, but some buildings have monthly updates. Some coops or condos only provide updates when something happens in the building like an elevator, laundry or boiler outage. Similar to boards only receiving complaints and not praises, we highly recommend writing positive updates as opposed to only breaking bad news.
4. Online community: This is basically an internal building-wide platform similar to Facebook. It is where residents can communicate, post for sale items, post service recommendations or list needs like cleaning services, nannies and dog walkers, or even neighborhood drycleners, cobbler, or restaurant recommendations. There are several similar platforms, but in NYC BuildingLink is the one that appears to be most broadly used.

For rental buildings, all these great tools are typically handled by the property management representative.

I hope you find this helpful!

For other best practices for co-op and condo boards, get our FREE Policies and Procedures Checklist emailed straight to your inbox. At The Folson Group, our goal is to inspire you to run your building like a business. We enable and inspire co-op or condo board engagements to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment, excitement, meaning, happiness, and increased probability of success.

Email us at [email protected] or call us at (917) 648-8151 to see how we can help your co-op or condo board today.