Field Guide: HOA

Most HOA boards are a few neighbors doing their best between day jobs. 🏡 Board business ends up scattered across email threads, group texts, and a shared drive nobody can search. Basecamp brings it all into one place, so the board can keep up and every homeowner knows where to look.

In this guide, we'll share an example of how a small HOA can organize its work in Basecamp, from board business and committee work to the news and documents every homeowner needs.

Jump to:

• Getting started with your projects
• Working with your board and your neighbors
• Managing requests and tasks
• Schedules and meetings
• Files and resident resources
• Staying on top of everything

Getting started with your projects

Everything in Basecamp is organized into projects.

As an HOA, you'll likely have a few kinds of projects: one that's private to the board, one for sharing news with every homeowner, and one for each committee or event.

In our Field Guide example, Maple Ridge is a community of 38 homes with a pool, a clubhouse, and a walking path. It's run by a three-person volunteer board: Zoe (President), Greg (Treasurer), and David (Secretary). They use five projects:

• Board Only for board business: budgets, votes, meeting minutes, and violations. Homeowners never see this one.
• Resident Facing for every homeowner: announcements, governing documents, and community events.
• ARC Committee for reviewing architectural requests, like fences, decks, and solar panels.
• Maintenance Requests for repairs to common areas and seasonal upkeep.
• 2026 Annual Meeting for planning the yearly homeowners meeting.

To keep the Home screen tidy, the board starred the two projects they open most, Board Only and Resident Facing. The three committee and event projects are grouped in a folder called "Committees."

Here's what Maple Ridge's Home screen looks like from the owner's view:

The annual meeting follows the same steps every year. That makes it a perfect fit for a project template.

Here's the "Annual Meeting" template the board created:

It includes a to-do list grouped by stage (Plan, Notify residents, Meeting day, and Follow up), a Calendar renamed "Meeting calendar," a Card Table for volunteers, and two empty folders ready to fill in: "Minutes" and "Agenda and packets."

When it's time to plan the next meeting, the board creates a new project from the template and adds the details. Here's the 2026 Annual Meeting, created from that template:

You can also make a project feel like home with a wallpaper. Resident Facing uses a photo of the neighborhood, so homeowners know right away they're in the right place.

Here's how the wallpaper looks on the Resident Facing project:

Maple Ridge has quite a few projects, but your HOA can start small. Begin with a private project for your board and another for sharing news and documents with homeowners. As your HOA gets comfortable with Basecamp, you can add projects for committees, maintenance requests, and annual meetings.

Working with your board and your neighbors

Once your projects are set up, you can invite your board, your volunteers, and your homeowners.

Before sending invitations, take a moment to think about what each person should be able to see and do. Basecamp has three user types: someone who works at your organization, an outside collaborator, and a client. You can see what each one can do here.

At Maple Ridge, the three board members are the team. Every homeowner is added as a client, including the neighbors who volunteer on a committee. Clients have the most limited access because they only see the items you choose to share with them. That's just right for an HOA. Homeowners need the pool hours and the bylaws, not the board's draft budget or a neighbor's violation notice.

The team can always see who's on a project by clicking the people icon on the top-left corner of the project's main page. Here's how the Team list looks:

And how the Clients list looks:

If your HOA works with a management company, you could add your community manager as an outside collaborator instead. They'll see everything in the projects they're added to, but can't create new ones.

The Message Board is where you'll want to post announcements and anything people should be able to find again later. In Resident Facing, that's a welcome post, holiday decoration rules, pool hours, meeting minutes, and an "Ideas and Proposals" post where homeowners reply with suggestions.

Some things are worth putting front and center. Use a Spotlight to bring an item to the top of the project page. Resident Facing spotlights a "Read me first: how to use this space" post and the Rules & Regulations, so a new homeowner sees them first.

For quick, real-time conversations, use Chat. Resident Facing's chat is renamed "Neighbors" and shared with homeowners, so it's where someone asks who left a set of keys by the mailboxes. The board has its own chat in Board Only, called "Board room."

As board president, Zoe keeps an eye on several chats at once with Bonfire, which opens them side by side: the Board room, the ARC room, the Maintenance room, and the annual meeting chat.

Here's an example of Zoe's Bonfire:

You can also @mention someone to get their attention, send a private Ping, or leave a Boost to thank a volunteer after clean-up day. 🙌

Managing requests and tasks

An HOA runs on two kinds of work: tasks that need to get done and requests that move through a few steps. Basecamp has a tool for each — To-dos and Card Tables.

To-dos are best for tasks that are either done or not done. You can group to-dos to keep a long list organized. In Board Only, the board's to-dos are grouped by area: Governance (update the bylaws, renew D&O insurance), Financial (approve the budget, send dues statements), and Vendors (renew the landscaping contract, review the pool bids). Maintenance Requests groups its upkeep by season, from pressure washing in spring to stocking ice melt in winter.

Here's an example of the board's grouped to-dos:

When a request goes through several steps, use a Card Table. Each card represents a request and each column represents a step. In ARC Committee, every architectural request gets a card with its lot number, like "Lot 18, privacy fence," and moves from New to Pending to Approved. A request that needs more information goes to Temporary denial until the homeowner provides it. Each card has a due date, so the committee never misses its 30-day deadline to reply.

ARC volunteers Jessie and Jennette are homeowners too, so they're clients in this project. They can see the Requests table and the review checklist, and each card is assigned to one of them.

Here's how the ARC Requests table looks:

The board tracks violations the same way, on a Card Table in Board Only that homeowners never see: Reported, Investigating, Notice sent, and Resolved.

Some requests turn out to be bigger than a repair. When the clubhouse roof leak in Maintenance Requests needed a whole new roof, Greg dropped the card into a wormhole at the top right of the table. It sent the card straight to the Proposal column of the board's Capital projects table, ready for a vote.

Here's the wormhole on the Maintenance Requests table:

Schedules and meetings

Between board meetings, community events, and deadlines, an HOA calendar fills up fast.

The Calendar brings together everything with a date in a project: events, plus any to-dos and cards with due dates.

In Resident Facing, it's renamed "Community calendar." Homeowners can see fall clean-up day, the quarterly homeowners meeting, the holiday party, and pool opening day. A few planning dates, like the newsletter deadline and the caterer walkthrough, stay with the board.

Here's the Calendar view of the Community calendar:

The board has its own "Board calendar" in Board Only, with monthly board meetings, a quick video sync, and the D&O insurance renewal date. And the 2026 Annual Meeting has a "Meeting calendar" with the dates that matter most: nominations close December 4, the meeting notice goes out by December 23, and the meeting itself is Saturday, January 23.

Here's the Agenda view of the Meeting calendar:

Files and resident resources

Every HOA has a stack of documents homeowners ask about again and again. Keep them in one place, and point people there.

Use Docs & Files to store them. In Resident Facing, everything is shared with homeowners: the Bylaws, the Declaration of Covenants (CC&Rs), the Rules & Regulations, the Design Guidelines, the Architectural Request Form, the Fine and Collection Policy, the 2027 Budget, last year's financials, and a Change of Address Form.

Here's what Docs & Files looks like in the Resident Facing project's gallery view:

Folders keep things tidy behind the scenes, too. In Board Only, the board keeps its vendor contracts in one folder: Snow removal, Pool service, and Landscaping.

Here's how the "Vendor contracts" folder looks:

If your HOA uses other services, like a payment portal for dues or a pool key fob system, you can add them as External Links. That way, the board and homeowners can get to them from the project instead of digging through bookmarks.

Here's how the dues portal external link looks on the Resident Facing project page:

Plenty of requests will still arrive by email. Turn on Email Forwards and you can forward those messages straight into the right project. When Min Li, a homeowner, emailed Zoe about a broken sprinkler head by the walking path, Zoe forwarded the email into Maintenance Requests and asked Jeremiah to take a look. He commented that he'd shut the zone off and ordered a new head, then replied to Min directly from Basecamp. His reply was emailed to Min, and a copy stayed in the project, so anyone on the board can see what Min was told.

Here's that forwarded email and the conversation below it:

Staying on top of everything

Once everything is set up, you can keep up with what's happening without checking every project.

The My Bar at the bottom of your screen gives you quick access to your tasks, upcoming events, bookmarks, and notes. On the right, the notification sidebar shows what's new for you, along with your Pings.

You'll also receive a daily email with the latest activity and a weekly email with your upcoming tasks. You can turn these off at any time on the notification settings page.

For questions you'd ask the board every week, use Automatic Check-ins. Every Monday morning, Board Only asks "What's on your plate for Maple Ridge this week?" Three volunteers with day jobs stay in sync without another meeting. 😊

That's a wrap for now! We hope this guide helps your board spend less time chasing emails and more time on the community you share. And if you need any assistance with Basecamp, you can check out our learning center, help pages, or send us a note at Support. Happy Basecamping!