Here’s hoping you have a great and meaningful November 4th.

Two months to go until the 2008 elections and some Voter Registrar offices across the country are still in the midst of trying to find places to set-up voting locations and alternate voting locations. This is a great opportunity for apartment communities to turn a medium to large space in the community into a voting location. If you have a business center, a large lobby area/ office, Community center or room then you have space.

Plus this is what you get back:
1. Free advertising for your community
2. Get to know your neighbors and have them refer business to you
3. It is a civil and patriotic duty
4. Your residents will not have to travel far to vote

Make sure to:
1. Decorate with lots of American flags and 4th of July type items
2. Make sure to have the community and company name everywhere
3. Provide some food and refreshments
4. Provide lots of brochures and other collateral for this event.

Remember this is for one day and it is a good way to give back to the community and show some good will. It will return loads of good busines in return. Contact your local registrars office today. Vote!

It turns out that one of the good things about apartment dwelling most anywhere is the close proximity to one’s everyday errand destinations, like the grocery store, the post office, the bank. One way you can beat the gas pump and lessen your fear of the bathroom scale is to ride your bike when running nearby errands.  Think of all of the benefits! You’re not creating any pollution. You’re reducing the local traffic. You’re saving money. You can save some more money by quitting the gym because you’re getting exercise on a real bike, not a stationary bike. You’ll live longer and stronger. You’re shaking it up- giving the locals something to think about. Plus, your derrier is getting nicer. What’s not to love?

Being at the front end of a trend can be a really fun thing- you get to have a new lifestyle! Just think of all the bicycle choices there are these days! Do you want to be an Italian racer type? Or a mountain-bike type? Or look like Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz, like me? She was the pre-curser to the Wicked Witch - You know, where she’s riding down the farm road with Toto in her basket strapped to her bicycle? I sing the tune under my breath when I pedal- “duddle la duddle la dah, dum. Duddle la duddle la dah, dum.” Yup. I think my kids would agree.

Until the downsizing occurred, which moved me and my packaging into smaller digs with NO recycling program. As you know, if you’ve been doing something for years, suddenly not doing it leads to heaps of guilt. I struggled to throw our bags of “trash” into the dempsty-dumpster, knowing it wasn’t really trash; I was filling a landfill. The local recycling machines are fine if all you want to do is get your deposit back on beverage containers, but what about the Cheerios box?

Here are some options to help get back that green feeling again:

Find a friend w/ curbside recycling and ask if you can add your materials to their bin. If they are green and gracious, they’ll let you, but be a considerate squatter. Crush your cans, collapse your boxes, roll over your milk jugs- in other words, minimize the volume of material that you put into their bin. One of the families in our school carpool agreed to let us share their bin, so I just made my contribution while I was picking up their kids for school. Eventually I overwhelmed the bin so I’m loading my leaf bags full of recycling material into my carpool partner, Mike’s car trunk and he puts it into his bin. When he gets fed up, I’ll have to make a new friend…

You can also collect your materials and lug it to a local recycling center, which is a bit of a hassle, but you’ll feel better. The challenge will be allocating space to collect enough to make the schlepp.

Maybe we can get our apartment communities to install recycling bins. It makes sense- we’re using less space than homeowners, so we should be using less landfill space than them, as well. Let’s here it for our team!

One other way to be a part of the solution is to reduce the amount of packaging you are buying in the first place. Duh. Remember, it’s not just Recycle. It’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, so don’t skip the first two steps!

We can make less waste, as well. Buy green, look for less packaging, use reusable shopping bags (because how ridiculous is it to put your used plastic shopping bags into the bag recycling container at the grocery stores so they can process it into - wait for it - new shopping bags!)… go ahead, blog your ideas on this so we can all try new ways.

Feeling green and fuzzy again,

T

Here is one idea to help:
Put together a community preparedness brochure for each move-in and resident. Put this information on your blog and website. Place this information on bulletin boards and areas of high traffic areas in your community. Make sure to include important phone numbers, a place where to meet in the community for information and instructions on what to do for various events. Make sure to practice drill a couple of times a year to keep staff ready and find troubles spots in your plan.

This may seem like extra work now, but when or if something happens you will be glad the proper steps were taken before to limit the chaos.
 

You might be tempted to talk to your vendors to sponsor an event, but this only works short-term. The problem with asking vendors is that you can beg for just so long until they start saying no, so whom do you ask?

If you are looking to do yearly, monthly, or even weekly events then seek out those with the marketing dollars trying to reach your residents. The first business is insurance. Insurance sales is the toughest job in the world. Insurance companies spend billions of dollars trying to reach your residents. Often the best marketing for this industry is to network. Why not let a local office put on your pool party this summer. Let them cater and host the event. Allow them to mingle, network with your residents, put out some brochures, and a banner. (Note: Do not allow them to put out a podium or make a speech during the event. Networking only.) Other good networking types of businesses that could benefit are your local real estate offices and auto dealerships.

The second business is the nearby supermarket. Talk to the store manager about putting on a monthly Sunday Brunch. So many supermarkets are competing for your residents business and this is a great way to reach them. They can bring store brand products, bring flyers, and coupons are always a great idea. Other businesses in this catgorey are restaurants, bakeries, and caters.

The third business type is the starving artists. They don’t necessarily need to be starving, but those looking to get name recognition are in this group. This group is made up of musicians, singers, and other performancing artists. Many are just looking for a place to play their music. Invite a local quartet who could play for free for your community with thr hopes of landing more gigs such as weddings or other events.

The last business type are the local potter, stain glass maker, painter, yoga instructor and so on. These businesses may be looking to grow or to establish more clients. The best part is that they can help enrich the lives of those living in your community and provide some fun.

The thing to remember is to ask the businesses to do this for free. Let them know you are giving them something as well such as space and an audience of potential new customers. The best part is that your not expanding your budget and providing residents with another reason to stay. Now get going on some fun!

So if not a gas card then what? Well another area hitting our wallets is the grocery bill. Have you seen your grocery bill lately? A gift card to the nearby supermarket has a lot more value now. This is just as an important of an issue as gas prices. We all have to eat and not having to pay for groceries for a little while can be a bigger incentive with the gas cards you get from the billion of others you do business with. I am not saying do away with the gas card, but why not offer a choice. Another great idea in larger metro areas is public transportation passes. Often if you pre-pay for a month or longer the deals get better and better. Mass transit is getting pretty popular even in California where the car is king.