Strata Challenges: Getting Meeting Quorums

In this edition from my series of blog posts on Strata Challenges … let’s consider the problem getting meeting quorums of owners.

Even though in many parts of Australia quorums need only 25% of the financial owners and that can include proxies, larger strata schemes often struggle to get quorums.  So, getting quorums at owners meetings is a strata challenge.

Without a quorum the meeting cannot validly proceed and a quorum must remain throughout the meeting for valid decisions.  The meeting has to be rescheduled when there isn’t a quorum (usually with further written notice) and lower quorum limits then apply.  In some cases decisions at no quorum meetings are interim only, needing further notice and time to become effective and can be challenged by non-attending owners.

Quorum problems not only delay decisions, they mean that owners don’t properly participate in decision-making and strata corporation operating costs increase.

But quorum problems have existed since the first strata meeting and exist throughout the world.

So, what do you do?

I think that there are many logistic and strategic solutions to fix (or at least improve) quorums including the following (in summary).

• Hold the meeting at the location that is most convenient to the owners attending. That’s not always the strata building since in many building half (or more) of the owners don’t live there. Sometimes, it’s the strata manager’s or caretaker’s office, or it could be another venue that’s close to transport and parking.
• Educate owners continuously about why they should attend and participate in meetings. Explaining the benefits of attending and that it makes sense to spend an hour two at the meeting, given the value of their investment.
• Like the meeting location, the timing of meetings can help (or hurt) achieve quorums.  Since there are generally no restrictions on timing; they could be on weekdays, weekends or holidays, at 8.00 am, during business hours or in the evening.
• Why not incentivize owners to attend meetings by offering prizes and rewards for attending (like door prizes, raffles, some extra’s from the strata corporation, etc) to be won by attendees and put on light refreshments (coffee, tea, water, cool drinks, mints, biscuits, etc).
• Make sure everyone has enough notice of the meeting get there or organise a proxy. Just because the law only requires 7 days notice, it better to try to issue meeting notices as far ahead of the meeting as possible – 4, 6 or 8 weeks is not too early.
• If you can’t incentivise owners to attend meetings maybe you can scare them into doing so by telling owners the home truths bout strata meetings and making sure there’s a controversial, difficult or challenging issue on the meeting agenda to spark interest, opposition and debate (perhaps the proverbial special levy)?
• Encourage and help owners organize proxies to help achieve quorums by making it easier and offering more options.
• Since not every strata owner uses English as his or her first language, provide documents in appropriate languages generally or on demand and arrange translators for the meeting.
• Try some unexpected things like live video links, conferencing and chat rooms from the meeting, electronic polling to get owners views on issues before voting, have a strata meeting jackpot, organize a
• strata comedian to meetings to entertain owners with funny (but real and educational) anecdotes and jokes, rate buildings by owner participation levels, and have a frequent meeting attendees programme with prizes.

These solutions are just extracts from my short article Strata Challenge article "Getting Meeting Quorums" that you can find on my website.  There I’ve suggested more than 40 things you could do.  Some simple, some fun, some conservative and others more challenging. 

I know they’re not all easy but that’s not the point.  Easy is for everyone else.

Getting it right and making things better takes effort – otherwise it wouldn’t be a Strata Challenge.

And, remember I’ll be taking on more Strata Challenges in future blog posts which may help you too.

So, give me another Strata Challenge to resolve.

Francesco …