June 30, 2022—Falls Church, Va.—Community Associations Institute (CAI) is proud to be recognized with four EXCEL Awards by Association Media & Publishing, a premier membership organization serving the needs of association publishers, communication professionals, and designers.
Association professionals from around the country gathered on June 22 for the 2022 EXCEL Awards, an annual event to recognize excellence and leadership in nonprofit association media, publishing, and communications. CAI has earned at least one EXCEL Award nearly every year for the past 16 years.
CAI's digital publication Ungated, originally launched in 2005, was awarded a gold for best overall blog site. Since relaunching in 2018, CAI's Ungated blog has focused on covering news, tips, and trends important to community associations. In 2021, Ungated published 62 posts that gained more than 25,000 views. Some of the main topics covered were rollouts of the COVID-19 vaccine, addressing building safety after the condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla., pool openings during the pandemic, and mental health support for community managers.
CAI's diversity and inclusion initiatives received a gold award in overall campaign. In 2020, following the social unrest and civil discourse regarding race, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the U.S., CAI recognized it could be doing more to educate members, the general public, and CAI staff on these important topics. In 2021, CAI published the Diverse and Inclusive Communities Guide. CAI also published several articles and resources in Common Ground magazine, blogs, and websites, and created webinars and education sessions. The CAI Board of Trustees approved a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Statement that was the initial work of a staff DEI Task Force. CAI and the DEI Task Force have been promoting the organization's commitment to creating a culture that supports and advances diversity, equity, and inclusion for all members and staff. As CAI continues this initiative, updates and information may be found at www.caionline.org/DiverseCommunities.
CAI's COVID-19 Pandemic Response received a bronze award for overall campaign. The jobs of governing and operating a community are complex, and they've only gotten more difficult since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our members came to us and each other for guidance. Thrust into a world of unknowns, we helped members find answers with research, how-to guides, and free downloads. In 2021, we saw more visits to the CAI website and increased traffic for the digital publications of Common Ground magazine and Community Manager newsletter. We witnessed more members engage with us on social media than ever before, and email open rates soared as members found new and updated resources in their inbox.
CAI's We Are CAI video received a bronze award. The video debuted at the 2021 CAI Annual Conference and Exposition: Community NOW in Las Vegas—the organization's first in-person event held in more than a year. The video promoted the value of CAI membership, thanked members for their continued support during the pandemic, and showed how we've come together in the face of adversity to build a stronger community—a community of members and the communities that our members support.
“We are honored to be recognized by our association peers for our continuous work to publish valuable resources used by homeowners, community association managers, and business partners serving community associations," says Thomas M. Skiba, CAE, CAI's chief executive officer. “In our quest to create communities that people are proud to call home, we believe that our content is one of the reasons why community association leaders join CAI and become long-standing, highly engaged members."
See a complete list of 2022 EXCEL winners here.
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About Community Associations Institute
Since 1973, Community Associations Institute (CAI) has been the leading provider of resources and information for homeowners, volunteer board leaders, professional managers, and business professionals in the more than 355,000 homeowners associations, condominiums, and housing cooperatives in the United States and millions of communities worldwide. With more than 43,000 members, CAI works in partnership with 36 legislative action committees and 64 affiliated chapters within the U.S., Canada, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates as well as with housing leaders in several other countries, including Australia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. A global nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization, CAI is the foremost authority in community association management, governance, education, and advocacy. Our mission is to inspire professionalism, effective leadership, and responsible citizenship—ideals reflected in community associations that are preferred places to call home. Visit us at www.caionline.org, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook @CAISocial.