The Business Secretary is responsible for organising and minuting the Committee Meetings and for the general administration of the u3a. This includes relations with the Charity Commission, which involves registering all Committee Members as trustees of the charity and making sure that they maintain their personal registration with the Charity Commission.

📄Business Secretary's role description

The Treasurer is responsible for the finances of the u3a, including the club account for the u3a as a charity and the accounts held on behalf of individual groups.

📄Treasurer's role description.

Officially, the IT Advisor is an advisor to the committee, however this role has grown in recent years, as the number of IT facilities required to support the work of the committee. The IT Advisor is, by default, the administrator for each of these, including a WordPress website, a membership databse, run under the centralised Beacon service, an internet and emails domain, and Google Workspace accounts. Recently, it has been possible to delegate some of the website maintenance tasks to volunteers, but this depends on the availability of competent volunteers.

📄IT Advisor role description.

The Group Co-ordinator has the role of supporting existing groups, and stimulating and encouraging the formation of new interest groups. This work will encounter various issues, but 3 are recurrent: an interest with no group, a group, that is full, with a substantial waiting list, a group with no leader. Group leaders also need support, particularly during the formation stage, as getting a consensus can be like herding cats. The Group Co-ordinator arranges the January Meet the Groups meeting, as a group fair, and, towards the end of the year, usually October, a Group Leaders' Lunch, to thank Group Leaders and other u3a volunteers.

📄Group Co-ordinator's role description.

The Newsletter Editor, obviously, has the role of preparing the monthly u3a newsletter that is, in principle, sent to all members. There is still a balancing act involved in this task, as a small minority of members request a printed copy rather than the standard email format. This leads in turn to a trade-off between the amount of information you want to distribute in one month and the reasonably affordable printing costs. As a result more of the newsletter content will in future be presented via the website, removing any implicit ceiling on the information that a group can post in a given month.

📄 Newsletter Editor's role description.