I'm working with our homeowner's association as a communications coordinator, trying to increase the quantity and quality of communication we receive. I was asked yesterday to develop a survey flyer as we try to determine how many children are in our neighborhood. (We're slated to start building a community school when we reach 300.)

We're having to ask our respondents, without including a postage paid return envelope, to either return the survey to our Clubhouse by hand or via USPS. Please forgive me, but my faith in my neighbors for this amount of self-motivation is lacking. Not that I can blame them.

So, I just developed an online survey using the same information and shortened the 63-character survey web address to 13-chracters using Tiny URL. I am going to include that web address in the letter in the hopes that it will make taking the survey even easier. The survey could also be emailed and posted to our community Facebook page - if, of course, we had a list of emails or more than 20 people on the Facebook page.

The number of resources out there for saving money and increasing the response to your marketing/communication efforts is astonishing. They key of course is to take advantage of them, and building your contact database.