Sean Coffers: 0:00

I think we've done a great job over the last 20 plus years creating professional development opportunities and professional networking opportunities, and now we're really looking at, you know, providing opportunity to other parts of our audience, you know, like we are a professional organization that serves, you know, community association, homeowners, their managers and their business partners.

Announcer: 0:27

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that care about board members: 0:29

Association Insights and Marketplace, Association Reserves, Community Financials, Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and the Inspectors of Election. You'll find links to their website and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 0:43

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here today for episode 149 to share news about a new free course from CAI, the National Community Associations Institute. If you're not familiar with it, they're a trade organization. It's called Community Association living and in their words, it's meant to be an accessible introduction for anyone wanting to know more about living in a community association. This can range from seasoned board members looking for more formal knowledge, which is you our audience, to homeowners thinking about volunteering, and this is your pipeline of new board members, all the way to folks thinking about buying in a community association for the first time. So today, I have with me two staff members from CAI to help describe and promote this course. Alden Michaels is the instructional design manner manager at CAI, a role he's held since 2019 if you ever attended a CAI webinar, you've seen him there as the producer and host and also in their quarterly Community Conversations LIVE program, and he continues working to author new courses and revitalize existing ones. Now, Sean coffers is their director of learning, and is relatively new after joining the CAI team in September of 2025 he's currently developing a variety of new educational programming for CA ice membership, like this new course, and he informs me to get ready for more in the near future. He's an engineer by training, so he's the kind of guy who sees a problem and designs a solution to fix it. Well, last week's episode 148 was a conversation with Russell Munns of community financials. He's one of our podcast sponsors. Now, community financials is all about helping board members know and understand their numbers. And in that episode titled how to save money at your HOA, it was jam packed with useful information. Now, if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, Hoa insights.org or watch on our YouTube channel, but better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms so you don't miss any future episodes. Those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights bug that I have here, one of my favorites that I got from our merch store, which you can browse through from our Hoa insights.org website, or the link in our show notes, you'll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some especially items for sale, like mugs. So go to the merch store and see what we have for sale, and at least download a free zoom background. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you'd like us to address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at Hoa insights.org, but today's episode is on me. I read about this course, and wanted to share news about it to all our audience members. So Alden and Sean, welcome to the program. Tell me more about this course.

Sean Coffers: 3:57

Yeah, thank you for having us today. It's really a great you know, opportunity to discuss more share with your audience. Kind of this new offering that we have to help prepare HOA and other community association members for perhaps the first volunteer role, or just a refresher, or, you know, anything else they might be looking to gain from this course. So our new course community associations live in was developed largely to provide an introduction to what a community association is, whether it's a traditional Hoa, a condo, a co op, or any other type of association where people live and volunteer and do all those things of day to day life, which is really important because lot of people don't really understand what they buy into, or what they volunteer or what they sign up for. They don't understand the language, the terminology. They don't understand, you know, a lot of those details, or maybe they are misinformed, or have a misunderstanding, or have a very bad viewpoint, some of these things, and we're really looking to with this course. Shed some light and share some knowledge in a very accessible manner. So that is the real goal of this course.

Robert Nordlund: 5:06

It seems like you should be walking around with every real estate agent and saying, tap, tap, tap, by the way, make sure they know about this course, not that it will make one sale or another sale better or worse. But I agree with you. I don't think the average first time buyer into a community association understands really what they're getting into. They are looking at the the price, they're looking at the kitchen, they're looking at the school district, and they say, Cool, we're in.

Sean Coffers: 5:36

That is, you know, very accurate. And you mentioned, you know, realtors having this course, one of the initial piece of feedback we're getting isn't just from home owners themselves, but it's from industry business partners, realtors, reserve specialists, insurance professionals and professional managers who are using this course as a way to educate the homeowners that they quit and providing it and sharing it as a way to, you know, raise The level of understanding on all parties, and we're getting some really great feedback in that result. In that regard,

Robert Nordlund: 6:05

I like that we have some of our audience members talk about having a welcome packet for new owners. And this may be one of those new things to give to a new owner. Welcome to you know, Riverview villas. We have a great place here. And don't know your your background, but if you're new to Community Association living, click here something like that, 100%

Sean Coffers: 6:26

and you're more than welcome to that is exactly one of the opportunities that we're trying to have this course provide. So this course is free and accessible to anyone who wants to sign up for it. Basically all you need is an internet connection. I would recommend doing it on the laptop or an iPad, but you could probably do it on your phone and have a totally perfect time. Is it a lot of

Robert Nordlund: 6:52

PowerPoint, or is it someone speaking to you? Tell me a window to what it's really like.

Alden Michaels: 6:57

The layout is very it's very mobile friendly as well. It's probably best on a laptop, as you said, but it's very much laid out with pictures, texts and interactions that are in there. So it's less of a PowerPoint and more of, sort of scroll through. So you'll have you'll have a bit of text, you'll have an interaction to sort of check your understanding of that you may have, like, a really, really small activity, maybe a sort or something like that, just to make sure that you know you're, you're picking up what we're putting down, and then before you move on. So, yeah, the the design, it's, yeah, it's fairly simple to go through. And because of that, because it has that sort of scroll down, it's much more mobile friendly than, say, a lot of PowerPoint style classes would be, though I agree with Sean. It is probably best on a laptop. Most things are, but it is. It's been made with a program that is very mobile friendly as well.

Robert Nordlund: 7:49

Got it. Is it something like a podcast you can just click and listen to? Or are you interacting with it, saying next and

Alden Michaels: 7:58

like you say, scrolling so you scroll through you it's broken up into 10 different sections. So you take each section as as you come the sections themselves. I think it probably works best, rather than just sort of marathoning and going through it, if you sort of take your time with each section, really, really read through, make sure you understand. So yeah, it's exactly that you get sort of a manageable chunk of something. You hit a continue, you get the next little manageable chunk of something. There are some audio interactions in there, but it is mostly going to be visual. It's mostly made to be made where you read, interact that way.

Robert Nordlund: 8:36

Got it? Okay? So you do need to be looking at it. It's not the kind of thing to do while

Alden Michaels: 8:39

you're driving, right? That's what, that's what a great podcast like this is for.

Robert Nordlund: 8:45

Okay, we'll do the talking here, and you do the looking when you get to this course. Why did CAI develop it? Was there an outcry for it? Or did you just sense that? Gee, this is what our industry needs. Because there's still too many people coming in and calling up the manager and saying, my toilet is not working. Can you fix it? Like, like at a department?

Sean Coffers: 9:08

Yeah, that is a great question, I will say. And Ty tying into some of the other pieces of educational content we are developing, and have developed, one of the areas we're really looking at is those people taking their first steps. We either into community association living or community association management or being a partner to that industry. I think we've done a great job over the last 20 plus years creating professional development opportunities and professional networking opportunities, and now we're really looking at, you know, providing opportunity to other parts of our audience, you know, like we are a professional organization that serves, you know, community association, homeowners, their managers and their business partners and without, you know, one part of that three. Legged community, you know, it gets a little wobbly. So this is really looking at those homeowners and providing that with a great resource to get more involved and to, you know, learn more about, not just, you know, association living, but just all different parts of home ownership, right?

Robert Nordlund: 10:19

Because it's a community association. Living is such an interesting animal. It's dependent on the volunteers, and those volunteers making good, wise decisions, caring for the assets of the corporation, selecting, as you said, appropriate business partners, getting good management support. You're owning it. So is it a government is it more important than the getting on the PTA at the local school? Is all these different volunteer and job type things that come together in a very interesting mix that I don't think the average person really understands it until they really look at it. And that's that's what fascinates me about this course. Another thing that spurred my interest in this was I had a new employee talk to me about the kind of information we present in a reserve study. We have an executive summary. He started using different words and phrases to explain this reserve study that he had just completed. And I thought that is fascinating, that he's not using our multi decades of words. He's using fresh words, and it sounds like you've got fresh words saying, Welcome to Community Association living. And again, you don't know whether they're the manager type, the brand new homeowner type, volunteer owner type even a prospect, but you're able to say this is what this animal looks like as you kind of peel away the layers of the onion.

Alden Michaels: 11:50

Yeah, absolutely, we've found that, you know, everybody in the industry, especially when they're new to the industry, a lot of times, and just the space, the space of community associations of right? You know, up to this point, our main offering would be, you know, we had documents and other things that people could read, but it's not as interactive as a class, and the only thing they could really interact with was the m1 100, which, you know, is a great, wonderful course, please take it. But that's not for everybody, and also even people that are in the m1 100, the first bit of it can be a bit overwhelming, because it's just like here, orient yourself to this brand new space. This is sort of that in between. This is sort of that really, really foundation level upon which you can build even, you know, if you're a or if you're a volunteer, if you're a manager, anything,

Robert Nordlund: 12:40

you just got me thinking, I took I'm an RS. I've been around for a long time. I'm a credentialed reserve specialist. And I don't know how many years ago, five years or 10 years, CAI created the ebp educated business partner concept. And that seemed like that was an entry level for US business people dealing with a community association, telling us who to deal with, how to deal with them, understanding their dynamics, life cycles. Seems like this is almost like the ebp, course, but for the homeowners, giving them that necessary introduction,

Sean Coffers: 13:19

yeah, that is a very good comparison. It's definitely that on ramp. So, you know, this is part of you know, this is maybe the first step for a lot of homeowners, but then if they are getting more involved, and they do want, you know, further resources after this, we do have our board leader certificate training program, which is a more in depth course that you can either take online or through your local CI chapter that comes with additional resources, templates and diagrams and documents to help you as a volunteer. But that is definitely positioned to be that next step, and this is really that first step.

Robert Nordlund: 13:56

Excellent. So Alden, you mentioned the m1 100. When I think of the m1 100, I think of that as the beginning of the manager training, direction curriculum. So the m1 100 is, I think of it management. Is that where the m1 100 in that series of classes go?

Alden Michaels: 14:15

Yeah, absolutely. That's for that's our credential for managers. But sometimes we have, I mean, a lot of times when we orient our own staff, we will put them in an m1 100 class to get them used to the space and all of that. So it's a lot, but, you know, that's part of what we do, because not everyone comes from the community association space to work for international

Robert Nordlund: 14:35

Well, the question is, does anyone Right? Exactly?

Alden Michaels: 14:39

So I certainly did, you know, I come from the education world, so, but it was great to know that. And you know, I ran with it fairly quickly, but it would have been helpful at the time to have something like this that would be interactive, to sort of lay that first foundation before I knew that. So, I mean, I think this is useful period, but I think it is. Is especially useful for for homeowners, for board members, for volunteers, because you know that this isn't a job that you know this isn't a job. This is where you live. This is something that's with you the entire time. And knowing the inner workings of that, knowing the structure of that, knowing what it takes to set one up, to to change things even on a very, very foundational and basic level, is going to be very useful.

Robert Nordlund: 15:25

Sean, you mentioned the board leadership training. So is that the same thing, a progression from this introductory course? Is that the next step there? Yeah, that is a great explanation.

Sean Coffers: 15:39

Basically, it's for the next level of homeowner who is, you know, looking to volunteer, perhaps be on one of their associations committees or their board, you know, providing a lot more structured understanding of how to do parliamentary procedure and how to work within your bylaws to set Good architectural guidelines. Things of that nature, where you know this community association living course is really, what is an architectural guideline, what is parliamentary procedure, so that if you're ever sitting in on board meeting, you understand how they're operating and what that structure looks like. Because one of the things we see is that you know, if you've ever sat in on your communities, or maybe your town or your city's meetings. It can be a little daunting when you know there's a call to order and motions and people seconding things and like there's a certain pace to it in a certain way it operates. And, you know, really helping people just understand that this is structured in a certain way to be smooth and efficient.

Robert Nordlund: 16:42

I like that. We regularly have what we call board heroes on the program. Board member who has soldiered, fought the good fight, done something at their association. And I remember speaking to one who I asked him, How did you get into this? And he said, Well, I bought a unit, and the person that I bought from was the president. And so he said, so now you can be the president. And in one month, he was in an apartment, he bought a condo, and instantly he was the president, because kind of came with being unit 13 or whatever. And it's crazy how people get into the board member space. Tell me how long is this? Course, if you were to Alden, I think in your words, you said, Marathon. It through. What are we talking about?

Alden Michaels: 17:26

Not very long, not very long. It's a, as I said, it's 10 sections. Each section, I mean, it depends, depends on the rate that you read, depends on the speed that you go through there, if you're reading really, really quickly. And you know, going through there, and you know, most of this already, and it's just sort of for a checkup. I mean, it could be under an hour, but if you're really taking it in and everything, I'd say, like, I'd say a little over an hour to do that hour, hour to two hours to go through the whole thing. It tops

Robert Nordlund: 17:56

when you said marathon. I was hoping, oh, gee, is it going to be four to 10 hours. When I took the ebp, it was, again, I've been in this industry for 39 years. When I took the ebp, it was a lot of Yes, I know, yes, I know, yes, I know, yes, I know. So I was able to go through it pretty quickly. And for someone who is familiar with the Community Association world, sounds like you can go through it in under an hour, but if you're new to it, you're like, Oh, I never thought about that. And then you're pausing, you're pondering, and maybe you do break it up into a couple or three sections to allow you that time to kind of process is that what you're talking about

Alden Michaels: 18:36

exactly, it's there's not a not a massive volume of text, but there's a high density of information. If that makes any sense, like we do our best to break it out and make it digestible. But if you already know the basic concepts, you read like, yep, yep, I know that I get that, you'll be moving on to the next section fairly quickly. If it's new to you, you may have to back up, read that paragraph a few more times, and then maybe Google some words, because there might be some jar you know, we try our best to break out any jargon, but all industries have them, and sometimes you need to learn them. And so that's, that's part of what's that? What's there. So, yeah, it's, as I said, not high volume, but high density.

Robert Nordlund: 19:13

I remember, shortly after I bought my condo, which was the precursor to getting into this whole industry. I had grown up watching the Beverly Hillbillies, and so I had moved from the Pacific Northwest, moved to Los Angeles, bought a condo. In the back of my mind, I wondered, Is there oil underneath my unit? And I was over the parking lot. And so I thought, you know, I wasn't gonna but I just had this dream that maybe there was oil in my parking spot right underneath my unit, and I remember one boring evening being an engineer myself. I was reading the governing documents, and I was so disappointed to find out I didn't own the petroleum or any minerals or whatever. I had no rights to anything i. Underneath the foundation of the property. I was like, I was just so disappointed. And there are those concepts that if you're new to this industry, you have to someone's got to tell you, because otherwise, you know, maybe you buy a unit and all of a sudden you start planting the flowers out in front of your entryway, and that's common area, and that's not your job, and doesn't fit in with the landscape theme. Is that kind of what we're talking about here? Sure.

Alden Michaels: 20:32

Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the many things, like figuring out and also then if there is some sort of a law, is there something in the recorded map, Matt, map, plot or plan that supersedes that and all and where to know to go from there? So, yeah, it's, is that there's all sorts of but it's not just those foundations. We also get into, you know, some softer ideas, like how to build community, the importance of civility also makes an appearance in there, which is, you know, we also think those are also foundational to Community Association living.

Robert Nordlund: 21:08

I agree. It is a community, and you want to have it be a place people like to call home, okay, well, I look at the clock, there's a lot more that. I want to ask about this and find out that the additional resources things like that, but it's time to take a break and hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we'll be back with more common sense for common areas.

Paige Daniels: 21:30

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Robert Nordlund: 22:02

and we're back. Well, one question I wanted to ask before the break, as we were talking specifically about this new course that is called Community Association living. Is there a certificate of completion, something that you can print out, or a JPEG or a PDF, or something that you can feel that as a grown up, you learn something new.

Sean Coffers: 22:21

Yes, there is, or, you know, in our case, share on LinkedIn and say, I completed this thing. Cool. You know, we do recognize that a lot of our community does enjoy sharing their accomplishments and sharing their continuing education in both professional and personal matters. So yes, we do offer

Robert Nordlund: 22:40

that nice okay, because I I must have my ebp certificate somewhere. It wasn't as significant as a diploma or my PE certificate or my Rs, but I like having a certificate of completion. A CAI doesn't survive on doing things for free, although we like that. Tell me about CAI membership and some of the benefits, some of the additional resources that that begins to unlock for someone who gets a taste of what CAI has to offer.

Sean Coffers: 23:15

Yeah, so I will say CI is a membership association primarily we in the summer or late fall, did cross the 50,000 member Mark, which we're very proud of. Becoming a member of CI gets you a whole host of member benefits, including discounts for paid education opportunities early and discounted access to events, both at the national and chapter level. It gets you access to our exchange communities platform where you can network and ask questions and get feedback from other homeowner leaders, from professional managers, from business partners. So no, there was a question the other day. We have upcoming reserve meetings that we need to have, and you know what resources are available for that? And there's a whole discussion thread on what people have used to prepare, not just themselves, but the rest of their, you know, committees and volunteer teams

Robert Nordlund: 24:10

to prepare for that. That's the overnight discussion group

Sean Coffers: 24:13

that is the exchange community boards. Yes, yeah, I read that every morning. Perfect condition that and get opportunities to access, you know, content in our publication, press access to our common ground magazine. All then feel free to chime in on anything I

Alden Michaels: 24:30

was gonna say. We've got for for board members. Specifically, we've got our program coming up next week. I don't know when this is going to go out, but it it is going to be on the 11th for about CAI is legislative agenda, because we have a government and public affairs team that may well be on the ground fighting for your particular association against a particular piece of legislation and all of that. And. Knowing that, being aware of that, being able to speak to that. That's a free two members webinar. So if you're a member, then you just can just log in and and do that. If you're a non member, and you'd still would like check it out, only $25 so you can do that as well, but, but that's, that's one of the great member benefits, is access to that webinar, do you and it's a quarterly webinar?

Robert Nordlund: 25:23

Yes, okay, I know you do a number of webinars. I went to one CAI webinar just recently. And I'm in the industry, and I register because it's great content. How many webinars do you guys do a year? Is it only quarterly? Or do you are you almost monthly? Or do you know?

Alden Michaels: 25:42

So it's a we have our monthly series, which is directed mostly for our managers. Board members. Often do come in. Board members of that last one, board members made up about 40% of our audience. So obviously they are we. We welcome them, and a lot of them find great, great use out of that. But that is, that is a paid webinar series, and that's the reason it's paid, is that it provides educational credit. And for that we, you know, we keep the any sponsorship or anything to a minimum, and try to maximize that educational content. Make sure that it's, you know, stem to stern all content for that Community Conversations LIVE is a quarterly still great content for that, but that one's much more discussion based that one breaks up into into conversations where you and people, usually from your region, can speak about issues that are close to that. So it's not just us telling you, it gives you a forum to speak to other people as well. And so that's done quarterly, where we have one February, as I said, coming up in a few days, and the next one after that will be in April. So those are the free, the other ones are the paid.

Robert Nordlund: 26:46

And Sean, I think you mentioned education. You and I bumped into each other at a national program in San Diego a few weeks ago. Wonderful to be in San Diego in January. The National Conference will be in Florida in June, correct, I believe. And then CAI has how many chapters, local chapters across the country, so 40 or 50 or something like that.

Sean Coffers: 27:09

I have lost count. We get internal emails starting more chapters. You know, continuously my home state of West Virginia, is in the final stages of becoming an official chapter. Very excited about that, but yeah, it is continually growing, continuing to offer more chapter opportunities for people in local areas to meet other people that are dealing with your issues of your state or even cities sometimes. So that's great opportunity to get involved.

Robert Nordlund: 27:38

So being involved, becoming a member in CEI allows you to go to local chapter events. And when I say events nowadays, there's a number that are, I think of them IRL in real life, and there's also a number of online type events, products, things like that. So there's a lot of resources. Tempt me attempt our audience with some of the resources that apply to board members. What downloads publications do you have?

Sean Coffers: 28:09

Yeah, that's a great question. So in addition to the full courses that we've discussed, we do have a series of best practices and guides for Association practitioners reports may able to touch on board leadership or parliamentary procedure. You know, if you are a specific position, say the Secretary or the treasurer, we have books on that to prepare you for that role, additional books on the Board Member Handbook so that you know you have a good reference to help you along your way. In addition to that, if your community is facing a specific thing, we probably have a publication on it. You're facing capital improvements or disaster, or going from developer managed to being a standalone Association for the first time, we had many, many publications to help with, yeah, and many, many cases common to associations.

Robert Nordlund: 29:00

And I'm imagining some are free downloads, some are nominal cost.

Alden Michaels: 29:03

That's correct. And I'll also plug we have some great features on our website, because a lot of issues are regional. You know, for example, can you display a flag depends what state you're in. We have a state by state on that. Can you have a virtual meeting state by state? We have a breakdown of that as well. And I also would really like to point out the foundation for Community Association research, which is also go through there. They have excellent research, excellent excellent reports, not just for managers, but I believe they have one coming up on aging infrastructure that I think would be really, really important for for everyone. I'm sure, Robert, you care deeply about that.

Robert Nordlund: 29:42

I'm one of the authors on that exactly that. Yeah, the whole Chaplain tower South issue still rattles our industry. I'm so pleased we have an organization like CAI that helps educate homeowners, educate all of. Volunteer leaders, the board members, so they understand the responsibility that they have to lead the association successfully into the future. So I look at the time here, and it is time to close. Alden and Sean, it was great talking with you and having you on the program. Any closing thoughts to add at this time? Yeah.

Sean Coffers: 30:18

Just want to say thank you for having us. It's a great opportunity to discuss both Community Association living course and other offerings that the community associations to offers to our homeowners, our business partners and our managers. Thank you for having us.

Alden Michaels: 30:33

You're welcome. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having us. That's all. I'll say, Cool.

Robert Nordlund: 30:38

Okay, well, I'll put a plug in Alden mentioned the CAI website, and if you'd like to see more about what CAI has to offer at CAI, not CIA, I think you've got your first 10 years to get that wrong a few times. But if you're interested in seeing what CAI has to offer, you can visit them. You can find them at CAI online.org. Well, we certainly hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 31:14

You've been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. You can listen to the show on our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or subscribe on any of the most popular podcast platforms. You can also watch the show on our YouTube channel. Check the show notes for helpful links. If you like the show and want to support the work we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing you can do is engage in the conversation, leave a question in the comment section on our YouTube video. You can also email your questions or voicemails to podcast at Hoa insights.org or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130, if you gain any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members. You know, you can also support us by supporting the brands that sponsor this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast do not constitute legal advice. You'll want to consult your own legal counsel before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video & Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team, you'll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with Stoke Light