Founded in 1973, CAI stands for ‘Community Associations Institute.’ CAI was formed to deal with problems involving association management. It was an educational organization then, but CAI made substantial changes in 1992 to its structure and became a business trade group primarily to lobby state legislatures. In 2005, CAI dropped its membership category for HOAs since, presumably, HOAs were consumers, users of CAI services and don’t belong in a tax benefited group whose aim is to support the business interests of its members.
