With the recent passing of Bill 53: The Service Alberta Statutes (Virtual Meetings) Amendment Act; Condo Corporations and Homeowners Associations (HOAs) across Alberta are now permitted to conduct governance meetings such as Annual General Meeting (AGM) virtually.

While the news has been met with excitement and open arms, many Property Managers and Board Members have since found it challenging to find a suitable solution that allows them to conduct their virtual Annual General Meeting effectively.

For the GetQuorum team, this comes as no surprise. While many would assume that standalone web-conferencing software, such as Zoom, WebEx, or Microsoft Teams, would be a suitable solution to conduct a virtual AGM, this is often not the case for many Alberta Condo Corporations and HOAs.

Conducting a Virtual AGM as an Alberta Condo Corporation or HOA

While it may be viewed as a relatively straightforward procedure, many Alberta Condo Corporations and HOAs have unique requirements they must abide by for their AGM.

These requirements, such as the need to collect owner consent for distributing communications electronically or accept advance general proxies and accounting for unit factors when tabulating votes, add a level of complexity to their AGMs. This additional level of complexity doesn't only create extra work for meeting facilitators. It also makes solutions such as a standalone webinar platform wholly insufficient for an HOA or Condo Corporation to conduct their meeting. This is why Condo Corporations and HOA's that want to conduct their upcoming AGM virtually need an innovative solution like GetQuorum's Hosted Virtual Meeting solution to do so effectively.

At GetQuorum, our full-service, Hosted Virtual Meeting solution does more than provide you with technical support for virtual AGM. Our full-service approach and platform's ability to accommodate the voting requirements and procedures specific to Alberta Condo Corporation and HOA AGMs is a key differentiator between our platform and a standard web-conferencing platform. To put this in perspective, let's take a look at the example below:

A condo corporation is planning to conduct its upcoming AGM virtually through Zoom Meeting. The corporation is comprised of 115 units, with many units having varying unit factors based on ownership. Meeting facilitators are now responsible for the following:

  • Collecting owner consent for electronic communications and distributing communications accordingly.
  • Distributing and collecting proxies and identifying which attendees have submitted proxies before the meeting.
  • Tabulating proxy submissions and conducting attendance before the meeting to ensure quorum is achieved.
  • Determine the appropriate weight of both live and proxy votes based on the unit factor of each unit.

In this example, meeting facilitators are responsible for conducting these functions manually because virtual meeting software, on its own, is unable to perform them automatically; a time-consuming and challenging task that is prone to errors.

In comparison, if the Condo Corporation used GetQuorum's Hosted Virtual Meeting solution to facilitate their meeting, this is where our full-service approach and innovative technology would come into play. Through our full-service approach, GetQuorum handles labour-intensive components of conducting an AGM such as, the distribution and collection of consent for electronic communications and proxies. On the technology side, through our API integration with Zoom, GetQuorum can automatically conduct attendance while instantly determining attendees' identities and indicate which have voted via proxy. The GetQuorum voting platform can automatically modify the weight of both live and proxy votes submitted electronically, based on the unit's respective unit factor. This means that once an owner submits a vote either live or through a proxy, it will be weighted appropriately, ensuring that the final tabulation of electronic votes is correct. This ability to streamline and accommodate the unique requirement of their meeting and voting procedures makes the use of a Hosted Virtual Meeting solution, like the one offered by GetQuorum, essential for Condo Corporations or HOA's looking to conduct a successful virtual Annual General Meeting.

Ready to get started?

If you'd like to learn more about our Hosted Virtual Meeting solution or other services designed to help you run more effective and efficient Annual General Meetings, click here.