From June this year the following changes will be made to our Dorking U3A publications:
Instead of the What’s On? inserts in each edition of the Newsletter, there will be an annual Handbook, issued normally in March but this year in June.- New members will receive a copy of the Handbook when they join.
- Members will be encouraged to retain the Handbook for reference until a new one is issued (the next one in March 2017).
- The Handbook will contain all that hitherto went in the special groups edition of What’s On? Information about monthly meetings and study days will be extended to include all dates so far available.
- Any changes to Handbook entries will be notified via the website, emailed monthly updates and the Newsletter itself.
- The Newsletter will continue to include reports of monthly meetings, outings, etc, and articles/poems, etc, by members.
- From 2017 the Newsletter will be issued in June, September and December, with the Handbook being published in March.
At present, there does not seem to be a coherent policy in terms of group fees. Some are shown in the Newsletter, some are not, some are pay as you go , some are as much as 13 weeks in advance!
My concern is that some potential members may be deterred by a 13 week advance payment as they know at the outset they won’t be able to attend every week.For example, they may have regular medical appointments, occasional family commitments etc. Equally, the absence of information about fees or a perceived bias against pay as you go could deter.
Perhaps this is something members could be asked about at either the AGM or in your proposed occasional e-mail?
More than three-quarters of our groups operate without regular subscriptions, but those where it is necessary to hire a hall or outside instructors have to cover their costs.
It is up to each group how it does this, and some are able to be more flexible than others in terms of pay-as-you-go, but the bills for hall hire and instructors’ fees are fixed costs that must be met.
A 13-week (quarterly) period is often chosen as it fits the pattern of the incoming bills. It also makes the work manageable for those volunteers who have to collect members’ payments.
As to the absence of information, we intend to make details of such payments available here on the website.