Why your AGM diary is your second most important asset?

According to LinkedIn strata warrior, Alex McCormick, the AGM season is upon us. He calls it the ‘stratapocalypse’ and suggests that roughly 40 % of all schemes have their AGM somewhere between now and the end of September. 

With electronic participation and voting, and therefore less scope for debate and amendment of motions, it seems AGMs are getting more formal, and shorter. One reader of The Strata Professional reported last week completing an AGM for a large building in Victoria in 15 minutes. That’s generally a sign things are going well but as we know that’s not always the case.

Some years ago, I attended an AGM for Q1 on the Gold Coast (Australasia’s tallest residential strata building) and it went for a marathon 8 hours. I knew we were in for a long day when the agenda included breaks for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. The other clue was the security guards. 

Apart from the importance of AGMs as the ultimate form of accountability to owners, they serve another important role. AGMs held within 3 months of the end of each schemes financial year is an important measure of a well-run strata management business. When doing due diligence on strata management businesses, the office AGMs diary was the second most important thing on my checklist after seeing if there was a full set of signed and current agreements.

Timely AGMs mean that the ‘back-of-house’ office structure and systems are working. Diaries are being kept up to date, minutes are getting done, reports are being procured, accounts are being closed off on time, and meetings papers are getting out. 

The opposite is chaos. Constantly playing catch up. Making excuses. Dodging calls and emails asking for something to happen. Holding on for dear life, and not being game to seek an increase in management fees. And worst of all, levies for the new financial year are being struck on the last budget to be passed. Inevitably this means bill shock when the ‘catch up’ levy notice is finally sent. 

So, what are the roadblocks to calling AGMs on time?  Here are my top 7 -

1. The date isn’t set at the previous year’s meeting so it isn’t in anyone’s diary.
2. You can’t find uninterrupted time to do the meeting paper while handling emails and phone calls from owners.
3. You haven’t loaded your standard templates and motions on to your strata management software. 
4. The accounts have not been well maintained and closed off on time.
5. An audit has not been arranged as soon as the year ended.
6. Sinking fund reports, valuations or other reports are delayed and you are waiting for these before calling the meeting.
7. The committee is procrastinating about the budget.

There are systemic solutions to all these roadblocks but surely the simplest one to fix is the first. It’s so easy to set the date for next year’s AGM as the last items on the agenda. Doing this every time, for every strata scheme set a rhythm for the office. It also cuts email traffic when you try to organise a date as the year draws to a close. 

If you haven’t done this before, set a schedule a date for all your AGMs and send something like this to your committee’s telling them what’s happening, and why. 

Dear Committee, 

We have recently reviewed our meeting practices and procedures to improve the quality of our meeting papers and to allow each of you as much notice as possible of your AGM. 

Accordingly, we are pleased to advise that your next AGM is scheduled for [date] at [time] and at the usual place, [place]. 

If for any reason we need to reschedule the date, we can discuss this at our next committee meeting. 

Best regards …  

Good luck and let us know if we can help refresh your meeting papers and get them loaded onto your meeting and voting platform.