When agreeing to serve as a director or trustee of a homeowners association or body corporate, your appointment is legally the same as if you were serving on any board of any business entity. Here we look at five reasons to be properly inducted into your new role.
Jeff Gilmour
Members of an association serving a residential community often agree to serve without considering the knowledge, skills, and experience required to perform the role.
While it’s not necessary to attend high-level, difficult training programmes to grasp the knowledge you need, it is vital that you equip yourself with the basic requirements to fulfill your fiduciary responsibility.
ARC’s recently launched online director and trustee induction programme provides a one-stop learning resource to ensure you understand the five key reasons this knowledge will make your journey easier and even more enjoyable. These are:
- As a director or a trustee, you will be faced with many decisions that you’ll need to participate in. Legislation requires that you are fully informed and have the necessary knowledge to assist when making such decisions, as they will impact on the community as a whole. Making important decisions - especially where the spending of funds is necessary – is part of your “job”, and an area you should be fully familiar with.
- Ensuring good governance and meeting all best practice guidelines is fundamental to your role as a director or trustee of a community association or body corporate. When members of your community scheme elect you as a director or trustee, they will expect that you are – or will become - familiar with industry standards and norms.
- Your role as a director or trustee requires you and your fellow board members to set strategy for the community scheme. Being soundly equipped ensures members of the management team have the skills required to implement all elements of that strategy. Being available to provide guidance to your community manager or managing agent requires a high level of dedication passion and support. So, while you may perform this role as a volunteer on a part-time basis, the strategy that the board develops must be implemented, monitored and reported on to the members that elected you.
- Members of a community scheme have become far more aware of their rights as homeowners or tenants. Often within your community scheme groupings of residents will “watch your every move”, so to speak; hence the necessity to equip yourself with the basic requirements needed to serve the community in which you live.
- Whether your scheme is a nonprofit company, a common law association, or a sectional title scheme, there is legislation that you must familiarise yourself with. This includes the Companies Act, the Sectional Title Schemes Management Act, the Community Schemes Ombuds Service Act and the Protection of Personal Information Act, all of which are covered in the director and trustee induction programme.
With vast experience in the roles of directors and trustees, ARC developed this five-hour, modular-based induction programme. Because it is online, busy directors and trustees can go through the programme in their own time, at their own pace and as often as they would like.
Integral to the programme are live online sessions where ARC provides support and clarity on any issues covering your role as a director or trustee.
It’s clear that many who volunteer to take up position as directors and trustees are dedicated to creating and maintaining the best possible living experiences within their communities.
At times, it may feel like a thankless job, but that is often due to other directors or trustees not fully understanding their roles, or owners who rent their properties out to tenants not having the required understanding to meet their commitments to the rules.
Armed with clear, in-depth knowledge of what is required gives you the facts you’ll need to make decisions, and the understanding you may need to ensure property owners know you’re working to keep their investments sound.
