Communicating With Owners: Newsletters, Blast Emails, Websites, Social Media and What a Board Should Never Put in Writing

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

Most boards communicate too little and then, once a controversy starts, too much and in the wrong register. The law draws lines in three places: what counts as statutory notice, what must and must not appear on the association's website, and what a director may safely say about an owner or a pending claim. Inside those lines a board has wide latitude, and the communities that use it well have measurably fewer disputes.

Notice, newsletters and blast emails are three different things

A statutory notice has legal effect. A newsletter does not. Boards get into trouble when the two are merged and a meeting notice goes out inside a community bulletin to whoever happens to be on the email list.

Notice by electronic transmission is permitted, but only as to owners who have consented. For condominiums, § 718.112(2)(d)7. allows electronic notice of board meetings, unit owner meetings other than recall meetings, and committee meetings to owners who consent to receive it, and places on the consenting owner the responsibility for removing filters that block the association's mass email. Cooperatives have a parallel provision at § 719.106(1)(d)3. The HOA rule is stricter in one respect worth knowing: under § 720.303(2)(c), an association may give notice by electronic transmission to a member who has provided a facsimile number or e-mail address, but the member must consent in writing to receiving notice that way.

Three habits follow from that. Keep the consent list as part of the roster, because § 718.111(12)(a)7. treats owner e-mail addresses and facsimile numbers as roster data and limits when other owners may see them. Keep posting and mailing for everyone who has not consented, and keep the proof of both. And separate the two documents: the notice and agenda go out as a notice, and the newsletter references it. Our guide on meeting notices and agendas covers the timing rules.

The association website

For a condominium managing 25 or more units and an HOA with 100 or more parcels, the site is not a marketing page. Section 718.111(12)(g) and § 720.303(4)(b) set out a list of documents that must be posted, require a protected area accessible only to owners and employees, and require the association to redact protected information before posting. Cooperatives have no statutory posting duty. The mechanics are in our guide to electronic records management.

What belongs on the public face of the site is short: who the association is, how to reach management, the governing documents if the board chooses, and meeting notices where the chapter requires them in plain view. What belongs behind the owner login is the statutory posting list. What belongs nowhere is anything that identifies an individual owner's account, violation, accommodation request, medical circumstance or legal dispute.

• Do not post a delinquency list, a lien notice, or a violation letter.
• Do not post board packets containing counsel's correspondence or claim material.
• Do not post the owner roster with contact information on a page the public can read.
• Do not post photographs of an owner, a vehicle, or a unit taken for enforcement purposes.
• Do post the budget, the adopted rules, approved minutes, and the notices the statute requires, and keep them current.

A condominium board should note § 718.111(12)(g)4.: a failure to post is not, by itself, enough to invalidate an action or decision of the board. That is a relief valve, not a permission slip. It removes one consequence of a lapse; it does not remove the obligation or the impression a stale website creates.

Social media the association does not control

Nearly every community now has at least one owner-run group page, and it is usually where the board's decisions are discussed first and least accurately. Boards ask two questions about them. Can we make them stop, and must we respond.

As to the first, generally no, and attempting it is risky. Owners have a statutory right to peaceably assemble under § 718.123 and § 720.304(1). Both chapters also prohibit retaliatory suits and actions against owners who complain, organize or publicly criticize association management: § 718.1224 for condominiums and § 720.304(4) for HOAs. A board that threatens litigation over posts is walking toward a claim with treble damages and fee-shifting attached.

As to the second, respond to the substance, never to the person, and never on their page. Correct facts on the association's own channel, in one short written statement, dated, without naming the owner who spread the error. A board that does this consistently trains the community to check the official channel first, which is the only durable answer to a rumor problem.

If the association runs its own page or group, treat it as an association communication. What is posted there relates to the operation of the association, and a director who deletes owner comments selectively is creating a different kind of problem. Either moderate under a written, neutral policy or do not moderate at all.

Rumor management

Rumors run because the board is slow, not because owners are unreasonable. The working rule is that silence is read as confirmation. A short, plain update beats a long explanation three weeks later.

1. Decide at the outset of any significant project or dispute who speaks for the association. One voice, usually the president or the manager.
2. Set a cadence and keep it. A four-line monthly update that says "no change" is worth more than an occasional essay.
3. Say what is decided, what is not decided yet, and when the next information will come.
4. Correct material errors once, in writing, on the association's channel. Do not correct twice.
5. Never respond individually to a mass email chain. Answer once, to everyone, and then stop.
6. Route anything involving counsel, insurance or an individual owner through the attorney before it is sent.

After a storm the same discipline applies under harder conditions, and the stakes are higher because owners are making decisions about their own repairs based on what the board says. Our guide on post-storm communications deals with that setting specifically.

What never goes in writing

Two subjects call for real discipline: pending or threatened litigation, and insurance claims. Both are areas where a sentence written to reassure owners becomes an exhibit.

Records protected by the attorney-client privilege and attorney work product are outside what owners may inspect under § 718.111(12)(c)5. and § 720.303(5)(g). That protection is the association's, and it is not unlimited. Circulating counsel's advice, or a summary of it, to the full membership can be treated as a disclosure that gives the protection away, and the association will not get it back. If the board wants owners to know the association has legal advice, say that it has legal advice. Do not say what the advice is.

• No statement of what the association will accept to settle, or what it believes a claim is worth.
• No characterization of coverage, exclusions, or what the carrier has said. Coverage positions change, and an owner who relied on the board's description will say so.
• No admission that the association was at fault, that maintenance was deferred, or that a prior board erred.
• No speculation about cause before the engineer reports.
• No quotation from counsel, and no forwarding of counsel's email.
• No promise about timing that depends on a carrier, a contractor or a court.

The safe formulation is narrow and boring: the association has reported the claim, is represented, and will report material developments. That sentence has never cost an association anything. Our guides on insurance claim documentation and confidentiality and privilege go further into both subjects.

Talking about an owner

This is where directors get personally sued. Florida recognizes a qualified privilege for statements made in good faith by a person with a duty or interest to another person with a corresponding interest, which is the framework the Florida Supreme Court set out in Nodar v. Galbreath. Applied to associations, a report to the board in a properly noticed meeting, or a communication to counsel or the manager, generally sits inside that privilege.

The privilege is lost through express malice — an improper motive, not merely a wide audience, which is the concept that matters here. Telling the whole community something the board needed to tell only its counsel takes the statement outside the protection. A post naming the owner in the third unit as a nuisance, a newsletter item describing a delinquency, a hallway conversation repeated in an email chain, all of these move a statement from protected to exposed. The association's directors and officers policy may or may not respond, and personal counsel is expensive.

The practical rules are simple. Discuss individual owners only where the discussion belongs, which is with the manager, with counsel, or at a properly noticed hearing. Describe conduct and never character. Never publish an owner's name in connection with money owed, a violation, a medical matter or an accommodation request. When enforcement requires a communication, send it to the owner, not about the owner. Our fines, hearings and suspensions guide sets out the process that keeps those communications where they belong.

Building a communication policy

A one-page policy adopted by resolution settles most of this in advance and survives the next election. It should cover six things.

1. Channels. Which channel is official, what the website is for, and whether the association runs a social media presence at all.
2. Voice. Who speaks for the association and who does not, and that individual directors speak only for themselves.
3. Consent. How owners consent to electronic notice, how consent is recorded in the roster, and that posting and mailing continue for everyone else.
4. Content limits. The no-writing list above, stated plainly, including the rule that nothing identifying an individual owner is published.
5. Response standard. How quickly owner inquiries are acknowledged and who acknowledges them.
6. Review. Counsel reviews anything touching litigation, insurance, enforcement against a named owner, or an accommodation request before it goes out.

Adopt it at a properly noticed meeting, put it in the new director packet, and review it annually. It costs an hour and removes most of the judgment calls that produce the expensive kind of mistake. See our new director orientation guide for what else belongs in that packet.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes reviews association newsletters, notices, website content and communication policies for boards throughout Southwest Florida, and prepares owner communications on matters involving litigation, insurance and enforcement. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Corporate Governance page.