“We posted it in the lobby” is not a communications plan.
Boards get sued less often for what they decided than for how owners learned about it — or didn’t.
Good community communication has two layers: what the law requires, and what trust requires. Confusing them is how boards either over-lawyer every email or under-notice a special assessment.
What usually has to be formal
For Florida associations, the formal layer is not optional theater. Confirm the details with association counsel and your governing documents. In practice, the pattern boards keep under-serving looks like this:
- Meeting notices with the right lead time and agenda substance — not a vague “board business”
- Access to official records within statutory windows when an owner asks properly
- Delivery method that matches your governing documents and statute (mail, electronic consent, posting rules)
- Votes that belong to the membership versus votes the board can take alone
- Closed sessions only for the narrow topics the statute allows — not for “hard conversations”
Skip the formal piece and even a good decision can get challenged on process. The substance of the vote may have been right. The notice trail still has to hold.
What trust requires
Statute does not write every sentence owners need. Trust fills the gap — or it doesn’t.
- Say the why in plain English, not just the resolution number
- Separate official channels from rumor channels (one source of truth beats five Facebook threads)
- Tell owners early when a cost is coming — surprise is what turns quiet people loud
- Answer volume without letting volume set the agenda
- Put decisions in writing owners can find later (minutes that mean something)
A practical rule: if an owner of average attention couldn’t reconstruct what happened from your notices and minutes, you under-communicated.
That rule is harsh on purpose. Busy volunteers often assume the association “already said it” because a director said it once in a meeting, or a manager posted something somewhere. Owners do not live in that thread. They live in the notice they received and the minutes they can find.
Where boards usually slip
The slips are ordinary.
A special assessment is discussed for weeks among directors and lands on owners as a short, late notice. A closed session stretches past the narrow statutory topics into the hard conversation the board wished it could keep private. Official records requests sit unanswered while the association sorts who owns the inbox. Meeting notices list “old business” and “new business” with no substance an owner can prepare for.
None of that requires bad intent. It requires a communication system that treats formal notice and owner trust as the same operating problem — not as afterthoughts once the vote is already taken.
Communication as fiduciary work
Communication isn’t PR. It’s part of fiduciary duty — owners can’t oversee what they can’t see.
Directors do not need a media department. They need a short, repeatable habit: what must be formal, what trust still requires, who owns the send, and where the record lives afterward. When that habit is missing, the association can make sound decisions and still lose the room — or the challenge — on process and surprise.
What’s the one notice your board still treats as optional that probably isn’t?
Where we fit
TBC Advisory partners with HOA and COA boards as an independent advisor — not a management company. We help officers tighten how decisions are noticed, recorded, and explained so control stays with the board and owners can see the work.