What We're Hearing
We've been speaking with presidents, secretaries, and board members of Cuban-American organizations in Miami as part of our validation process for Eroica. We're not pitching anything. We're asking about their experience — specifically, what's hardest about coordinating decisions with a group of engaged, opinionated, committed members.
Three problems come up in almost every conversation.
Problem 1: WhatsApp as the Decision Layer
"We have a board of 15 people. We make most decisions in the WhatsApp group. Last month, we needed to approve an expense of $2,000 for an event. I posted the question, 9 people responded with 👍, 2 said 'I'm fine with it', and 4 never responded. Is that a vote? Is that quorum? We just assumed it was approved and moved forward. When the treasurer asked for documentation, there was nothing."
WhatsApp is how Cuban-American organizations communicate. That's not going to change — and it shouldn't. WhatsApp is excellent for coordination, updates, and conversation.
The problem is when WhatsApp becomes the *decision layer* — when thumbs-up emojis become binding votes, when silence is interpreted as consent, when there's no record of what was decided or who decided it.
The organizations that handle this best have a clear separation: WhatsApp for communication, a separate system for decisions. The organizations that struggle most have collapsed these two functions into one.
Problem 2: The Grey Account
Every Cuban-American association we've spoken with has some version of this: money that belongs to the organization but lives in an account that only one person can access. Sometimes it's the treasurer's personal Venmo. Sometimes it's a Zelle number attached to someone's phone. Sometimes it's a bank account in someone's name that was opened "temporarily" five years ago and never changed.
The person who controls this account is not necessarily doing anything wrong. In most cases, they're genuinely serving the organization and would hand over access immediately if asked. But the *structure* creates fragility.
When that person gets sick, moves, or has a conflict with the board — and all of these things happen — the organization is suddenly cut off from its own money. We've heard stories of associations that spent months negotiating access to funds that were legally theirs.
The fix isn't complicated: the organization's money needs to be in an account that requires collective authorization to access. Simple principle. Very hard to implement without the right infrastructure.
Problem 3: The Quorum That Nobody Can Verify
"Our bylaws say we need 50% of members in good standing to ratify any board decision. Last year, we had 23 people at the meeting. Our secretary said that was 51% of eligible members. Two board members said no, that number was wrong, the actual membership was 60 people, and we didn't have quorum. The meeting dissolved. Nothing was decided. The event we were planning had to be canceled."
Quorum disputes are the most common cause of paralysis in Cuban-American associations. And they almost always come back to the same root cause: nobody can agree on who the "members in good standing" actually are.
This isn't about bad intentions. It's about the difference between a membership list and a verified membership list. Most organizations have the former. Almost none have the latter.
The Common Thread
These three problems — decision opacity, treasury fragility, and quorum uncertainty — are not independent. They're all symptoms of the same underlying issue: Cuban-American associations have governance commitments that their current infrastructure can't reliably support.
They want to run real elections. They want collective financial control. They want records that hold up. They just don't have the tools to do it without heroic effort from a small number of people who carry everything on their backs.
That's the problem Eroica is designed to solve. Not by replacing the community — but by giving it the infrastructure it already deserves.
*We're conducting validation interviews with Cuban-American association leaders in Miami. If you'd like to participate, reach out to vote@eroica.io.*
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