HOA management software?

March 10, 2010 2:07 PM

Looking for software recommendations for managing a very small home owners association.

Our HOA is pretty small (14 townhouses), and I am looking for ideas for software that can help us communicate more effectively with each other, as well as post information such as meeting minutes, Joint use agreement etc. Our association is in a bit of a mess right now, and we have some communication and budget issues we are working through. Because money is so tight, ideally I am looking for a free solution, or very low cost. My husband was roped into being on the board, and we really want to help get this association back into shape. Any ideas for software that might help us out?

posted by Chick Pea to Technology (5 answers total)

To manage your budget, Gnucash is the canonical open-source answer. For communication and generaly running things, all sorts of software would be usefull, but for a small organization with little in the way of IT infrastructure and skills I would suggest keeping it simple: Get everybody on a mailing list first, and see how it goes from there. An on-line forum, such as phpBB would be one order of magnitude better than a mailing list, and if you really want to be fancy, use an open-source CMS such as joomla or drupal for a full-blown community website.
posted by Dr Dracator at 2:30 PM on March 10, 2010

Google sites might be a good option. It's free. People probably already have google accounts.
posted by chris p at 2:40 PM on March 10, 2010

Best answer: There is even a HOA template.
posted by chris p at 2:45 PM on March 10, 2010

Check out Big Tent. It's free, you can restrict access to only the households in your association, the individuals don't have to divulge anything but their screen name, and so can maintain their privacy while still sharing, etc. I just suggested this to my HOA, and use it for a local parents group as well. Individuals can choose to receive email summaries of activity on the Big Tent board, or no emails at all, etc. All in all, pretty versatile.
posted by wwartorff at 4:30 PM on March 10, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for the answers, I am going to give Google sites a try, but I will look into the other suggestions as well.
posted by Chick Pea at 7:32 PM on March 12, 2010