Robert - At our 2,000+ resident community in Colorado, we find that maintaining Google Groups email lists are an excellent vehicle for resident-to-resident communications. I’m not sure what Richmond means when he suggests that Google Groups is not as “user friendly” as the much lesser-known Groups.io
We started our Google Groups a few years ago and they’ve been thriving ever since. We have one volunteer email manager for each of our 15 buildings. The manager’s role is to explain the Group Email arrangement to new residents shortly after they move in. New residents are typically happy to sign up. Thereafter, email messages are typically forwarded by the building’s email manager (who receives email messages from other building managers, or from any one or more resident groups or committees wanting to publicize upcoming events or activities). Or the building’s group can be set up on Google Groups so that any resident member of the Group in the building can send to all other residents in the building’s email Group.
Given that you’ve got tech savvy residents, you’ll find it easy to come up with an email manager for each of your buildings.
Our email groups are working so well that the Administration recently requested permission to occasionally send out an Admin announcement to the resident members of the email Groups, and the building managers were happy to cooperate with that request. The inherent “push” quality of emails makes it a very effective way to get messages seen by residents, as compared to bulletin boards or weekly or monthly published newsletters. -Barry Peters, resident, Wind Crest