The do-it-yourself template, designed for individual properties, is the creation of Chrissy Jackson, ACM, PHC, edited by George Allen, CPM, and distributed exclusively by PMN Publishing.

"This much-needed and timely publication, besides being eminently useful and practical, is a giant step forward in professionalism for the manufactured home community industry," said George Allen. "This user-friendly notebook is a must-have addition for any responsible, forward-looking owner/operator/investor/manager." Gub Mix, Executive Director of the Arizona-Idaho-Nevada-Utah Manufactured Housing Associations, stated: "The Rental Community segment of the manufactured housing industry has long needed a Standard Operating Procedures manual such as the one written by Chrissy Jackson. I enthusiastically recommend it to all of our community operators."

The SOP template was designed for creating your own customized and highly important property-specific Standard Operating Procedures Notebook. Every major topic is covered in detail: Hiring/Supervision, Machinery/Equipment, Materials/Supplies, Policies/Procedures, Budget Preparation, Resident Relations, Rent Collection, Problem-Solving, Maintenance, Marketing/Advertising, Useful Forms, and much more. Chrissy Jackson covers one topic per page, leading you with pertinent questions and information on the left side of the spiral binder (on removable blue pages), then Jackson directs you to use the right side of the book (white pages) to enter property-specific information.

Every other successful industry has SOPs, and this invaluable tool with its twelve chapters, was designed to be used over and over again, for increasingly better community management. The larger REITS and corporations with multi-portfolio communities typically have their own SOP manuals, but "these are company-specific, detailing corporate rules and guidelines," said Jackson. "They are not property or community-specific, and do not take into consideration the unique situations and problems of an individual community, locale, etc."

The implications of this historic move for our industry will have a positive domino effect on many levels. In the short term, this user-friendly guide will organize, direct, and streamline every community manager's day-to-day activities. Used often and well, the planning work done to complete this SOP for a community, and implement policies and procedures set within it, will improve community operations. The act of "committing your goals to paper," as Jackson put it, will provide community managers with a way to track the results of their business decisions. Smoother resident relations, improved cash flow, more timely rent collection, regular local advertising, will all have positive effects on the bottom line -- effects that can now be traced directly to community managers' efforts. Community managers can look forward to going to work, owner/operators will be able to see the beneficial results of their managers' hard work, and residents will be happier.

The image of the manufactured home community industry as a whole will improve, as one by one, individual communities adapt and use this SOP manual.

"So often, I've seen wonderful community managers leave jobs, or be fired, because of a lack of information and direction on the part of the owner/operator, and previous manager," said Jackson, who strongly feels that the SOP notebook is an answer for finding and keeping good managers. You have to give your employees the tools to do the job, and without an SOP manual, it's like "giving them a pair of scissors instead of a mower to cut the lawn." said Jackson. "Our employees are our customers, and if we don't treat them as such, we shouldn't be surprised when they don't think of our residents as customers."

Here's a concrete example of how the new SOP can help: Under Machinery and Equipment is a section on "water treatment plants." If your community has one, the book guides you to locate the plant on a scaled map of the property; indicate the capacity of the plant along with operating instructions and identification of the treatment methods in place. Having this kind of information in one book, at your fingertips, can save time, money, and potential lawsuits from happening. In another section, you will be prompted to enter the name, address, phone, and account numbers of the bank your community uses.

How many precious minutes have you wasted looking for information like this, time and again?

 The SOP notebook encourages you to gather information, detail it, and set policies and procedures in writing. For example, a procedure is how you want bank deposits made, step by step, including whether you want copies of checks made. A policy would be what happens if you didn't make a copy of checks, and a resident insists they paid their rent, and you don't show that they did. How will you handle that situation? Why bother? Because handling the same situation may come up one week with Mrs. Smith, and the next with Mr. Jones -- and enforcing the same policy with both people will save a lot of problems and aggravation over time.

Independent operators and smaller owners with one or two properties will benefit greatly from the creation of the SOP notebook, for these are the people who may not have the budget for extensive outside training on management. It is not a quick-fix; it takes time and dedication for community management to set up and use the SOP notebook. It asks that you commit to paper the way you want your community to operate, and the way you would want things handled in your absence. It completely revolutionizes the "fly by the seat of your pants theory" of management.

"In this era of potential lawsuits, we need to pay more attention to the way we operate our business, and the image we project," said Jackson. "The manufacturers have built a better product; the retail centers have, for the most part, improved the look and landscaping of their model centers; banks, finance companies, and suppliers have all taken steps to upgrade their image. The sad fact is that manufactured home communities themselves are largely at fault for the poor public image of our industry," said Jackson, who has worked on both sides of the fence -- for smaller owners whose properties were run without a lot of structure, to large property management firms, with rigid policies in place.

The on-site manager and the absentee owner are the ones struggling to come into compliance with government mandated policies, reports, testing, and expectations.

The SOP manual has been field-tested and fine-tuned to provide managers with the best and most comprehensive information possible, and Jackson, founder and head of the Chrissy Jackson Seminar Division of Steiner Communities, provides workshops and training based on the SOP notebook.

However, it provides a do-it-yourself, stand-alone tool for revitalizing community management. You can no longer do business the way you did ten or twenty years ago, and expect your community to stay alive. If you know you need to change, but don't know how, call PMN Publishing for a free brochure on this outstanding SOP notebook at (317) 888-7156.