The ActiveBuilding Blog

How to create a Sense of Community

  

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A sense of community is the most important factor in determining resident satisfaction with apartment management companies, and that residents who associate a strong sense of community with their apartment complex are considerably more satisfied than those who do not. A sense of community can be achieved in many ways, and just like advertising/marketing, the principles remain similar: repetition, create interest, and offer a clear call to action. Most initiatives to create a sense of community in apartment complexes are based on property events, property competitions (pets etc.) and real-world physical means. These means are inefficient, ineffective (affect a subset of residents) and limited (budget-wise).

One more thing to consider: proximity or shared territory alone cannot by itself constitute a sense of community; there is another dimension that is also essential. That dimension is the nature and quality of relationships within that community. This implies that to achieve a true sense of community, residents living in the same proximity/shared territory need to establish relationships with each other. The quality and nature of such relationships will define the true sense of community in an apartment complex. And the quality and nature of such relationships are limited by the tools available for the job.

Now, back to earth.

If you are using ActiveBuilding's Resident Portal, you have a wide variety of tools to enable and establish relationships between your residents (hence forming a sense of community): "Who's my neighbor", "Message-Boards", "Neighbors recommend", "Resident offers" and more. All these tools enable relationship-building by residents, with residents, in a mass-scale, low-cost and effective manner. However, you could make it better; much better. That “events” budget that you have? it could be redefined (or even repurposed). Do you have a Poker club in your building (created by residents)? Do you have a book club? Knitting club? running club? these are all essentially recurring "events" in the property, initiated and run by residents.

* Example of a real Message-Board in an ActiveBuilding Resident Portal

Why not sponsor those? Here’s an idea: define a criteria to sponsoring a resident event, and define a given budget (per amount of attendees). A possible criteria is an event that a) is within the property, and b) has 10 or more participants (residents and non-residents). The "budget" could be light snacks, or alternatively rental of a movie, or anything you think is relevant and within a certain cost. Suddenly your “events” budget is enabling many more events, which are more effective (since residents control and run them) and much much more efficient (the cost to you is a fraction and the result is a dramatic increase in resident satisfaction). These gatherings and events are happening anyway. Why not enhance and support them; isn't that what we're all here to do? Try it out; let us know how it goes.

To summarize, I will repeat what I wrote at the beginning of this post: "A sense of community is the most important factor in determining resident satisfaction with apartment management companies, and that residents who associate a strong sense of community with their apartment complex are considerably more satisfied than those who do not". And if you think I made this up, don't be fooled: JD Powers conducted a massive survey in 2007 with regards to resident satisfaction, and among all their findings, this was their most significant one.