Most shareholders would agree that attending their annual meeting is an activity low on their priority list, right after flossing their teeth and organizing their sock drawers. Some feel the meetings are boring, while others feel they don't need to be there as long as their building is running smoothly. Others simply just don't care.

Why don't people feel the need to attend annual meetings? There are benefits and advantages of non-board residents attending their meetings and boards and managers sometimes grasp for ideas on how they can get more participation from residents.

Reasons People Skip Out

People will skip their annual shareholder meetings for a variety of reasons. They might be too busy. They might not care. Or they might look at their smoothly-run building and think, "Everything is going fine as it is. Those in charge don't need me."

"Everyone thinks that the board is doing everything possible to protect their interest," says Chandra Jain, a management consultant in Kew Gardens, Queens, and president of Queens Corp. Condo Corporation "The better a co-op is operated, the less attendance you have [at a meeting]. If you have questions about maintenance or the building is falling down, then you have more people showing up to voice their complaints and displeasure. If everything is running smoothly, nobody wants to go."

Other shareholders might simply be lazy, too busy or apathetic about their building's daily business, which often is uninteresting to residents.