LINK FROM HOME

LINK Meetings continue to grow! We at RHAWA are excited to share that we hosted our first ever online LINK Meeting on September 23. This is now a recurring meeting that will occur on the fourth Tuesday of every month in order to expand our reach of member engagement and networking opportunities for our membership.

Regular attendees for the in-person LINK Meetings which occur all across the state will be familiar with the fact that LINK Meetings provide a place for members to share their experiences with one another and tackle unique, area-specific challenges with the help of their peers. LINK Meetings also serve as a place to share recommendations for vendors of best practices within a specific geographic location.

The online LINK Meeting takes the spirit of LINK Meetings and brings it statewide. We will give an overview of the same topics as covered in the in-person meetings, while allowing members from any location to join. Attendees will still be able to network and share their experiences with each other. However, the information shared will be more applicable to general best practices and statewide policies rather than being location-specific. As with our in-person meetings, member-to-member communication is greatly encouraged and these meetings are not intended to be a simple presentation from RHAWA staff, but an experience where members are encouraged to speak up and take the conversation where they want things to go.

LINK Meetings have also served as a great place for members to share feedback with the membership and government affairs departments of RHAWA. During Legislative Session, member feedback had a direct impact on modifications to calls to action as well as the information provided about certain bills to ensure all members were receiving the highest level of information from our government affairs team.
We hope that the online LINK Meeting will foster even more feedback from areas of the state that may not have regular access to RHAWA’s member engagement activities.

Even better, LINK Meetings can serve as an introduction to RHAWA for those who may not be familiar with what we do or are just starting out in the rental business. LINK Meetings are open to anyone regardless of their membership and we encourage members to reach out to their peers and invite them to these events in order to deepen understanding of what it takes to operate a rental business and how an RHAWA membership can help out independent housing providers.

This LINK Meeting has been scheduled at a recurring date which will not overlap with any existing LINK Meeting. This will allow those who like to attend multiple LINK Meetings in the same month the opportunity to attend both an in-person and virtual LINK Meeting. Last year, the format of in-person LINK Meetings was changed in order to accommodate this concept and members who are centrally located between multiple meetings have taken advantage of the fact that you often receive different perspectives and advice when attending multiple meetings. As the online LINK Meeting develops, it will also have its own character with regular attendees helping shape the tone of conversation and the topics covered.

As with all other LINK Meetings, the online LINK Meeting will have RHAWA staff helping to guide conversation and share their insight when necessary. However, the purpose of a LINK Meeting is to provide membership with an opportunity to hear from each other as well as the association. Getting involved with the association is the key way to get the most out of your RHAWA membership. This can serve as the first step in enhancing your involvement with RHAWA. You may even find this experience so valuable that you begin to engage with some of our other online engagement opportunities such as joining a committee or attending a class. 

There are a wealth of ways to stay informed and take advantage of your membership with RHAWA and our staff are always looking for new ways to provide you with the highest level of service and value. This is simply one piece in the ever-growing services we provide and I hope you consider sharing some of your time with us and checking out the new format for our LINK Meetings. As always, these meetings are completely free to attend! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about current or upcoming LINK Meetings. You can find dates and locations for these meetings on our website under Calendar or in this newspaper. However, please make sure to register for any meeting you plan on attending. For this online version, registration is the only way to get the information in order to attend the meeting. With in-person meetings, while registration is not technically required to attend, it does greatly help our staff to know how many attendees to expect as well as communicate with the venue about how much space we will need for the meeting. If you are bringing a guest who is not an RHAWA member, you are still able to make a registration for them.

Thank you for helping us continue to grow our member outreach and create more value for members like you. Let us know if you have additional feedback or ideas for how we can continue to improve our services and give you the right tools to operate your rental business.