I was really pleased to find out today that the Cedar Creek Homeowners Association in Olathe, KS is beginning the process of phasing out their paper newsletter to save money. The savings to the HOA are substantial and could exceed $18,000 per year.

One of the greatest benefits of eNeighbors is that you can save money by serving your communication needs online. You no longer have to bear the cost of postage, paper, printing, editing, and so forth.

According to Steve Maerz, a Cedar Creek Board Member who manages the website, the association currently budgets $1,500 per month to send 1000 newsletters, or $18,000 per year.

The savings won’t be realized immediately though as they are phasing out the monthly newsletter by printing newsletters every other month. Steve explained in an email to me that “we are telling folks that we will only mail every other month with the month that it isn’t mailed being on eNeighbors.”

The idea of sending paper newsletters every other month was not something that I’ve seen done before but I think it’s a great way to ease the community into a new process.