At last some cool weather. The perfect time of the year to have heating/cooling problems since we don’t need either at the moment.

October Board Meeting

The Board switched back to 100% virtual meetings and the meeting was productive.

• Two new Board members were introduced and approved by the Board:  Mary Stevens and Tara Roesler. They replaced David Schwalm and Carol Taylor-Tassone who resigned.
• The proposed budget for the year was approved
• Ginny Sylvester, the Adopt-A-Family chair, reported that the committee is looking forward to going to the stores to buy and wrap gifts.
• Pat Schneider, Seminar Chair, reported that the Open Enrollment Seminar was very successful with over 100 attendees including some from NAU and UArizona. You can find a story about the seminar on our Seminar reports page (enter “October health insurance seminar” in the search box). Pat also disclosed the spring seminar schedule:  Downsizing (January), Tell me a story (February), Affordable housing for elders (March), and The healthy brain (May). Be sure to check the Events menu on our website.
• Sue Henderson, co-chair of Pre-Retirement seminar, reported that the September seminar had great attendance and participation.
• Larry Edmonds, ASURA President, displayed the hardware we received from AROHE for winning one of their Hero Awards, ours for the Video History Project.
• Barry McNeill shared his screen and gave the meeting a quick overview of the new website.

Proposals from the Pre-Retirement Seminars Committee

1. As mentioned above the September seminar panel on "what do you wish you knew about retiring from ASU before you retired?”, generated much interest and discussion. The participation was so good that the committee thought it could be a good idea to get other ASURA members to submit their retirement stories, stories that could be used to help others ease into retirement. The committee would like you to think about your retirement experiences and then write a 1 - 3 paragraph answering the question "what do you wish you knew about retiring from ASU before you retired?" These “blogs” will be posted on our website in a blog fashion. We will only use the first names of the contributors. Please send your answers to the question to Sue Henderson at suegreenhenderson@gmail.com
2. The committee periodically receives retirement questions that they do not have answers to and the committee would like to have a list of members, ambassadors, who have the necessary expertise to address the question. The committee is seeking retirement ambassadors who are willing to answer questions from folks with specific questions. If you are willing to volunteer, and have your name listed on the ASURA website as a volunteer, please email Sue Henderson at suegreenhenderson@gmail.com. If you have a particular area of expertise (such as insurance, taxes, downsizing) please include that in your email. 

ASURA Needs Volunteers

We have had several long-time volunteers finally say enough is enough and have removed themselves as chairs of committees. At the moment we:

• do not have a chair for Luncheons & Special Events,
• have an interim chair for Membership and
• we have an Obituaries’ chair who wants to leave ASAP

To keep these committee functioning we need chairs and in some cases committee members or co-chairs. If we cannot get volunteers to step forward, Hal White, my sea anchor during my presidency, says that in a volunteer organization if you cannot get volunteers to take on a task then you should stop doing the task – in this case, no obituaries, no luncheons & special events, no active efforts to advertise ASURA to future retirees. That is not the vision I have for ASURA and hopefully not one you have but to keep this from happening we need volunteers, i.e., members who want to take on the tasks.

To give you some sense of what you might be signing up for, following is brief overview of the major committee tasks.

• Membership Committee – this committee has two major tasks: Publicity and Secretarial. The chair does a number of things to make ASURA known, e.g., arranges to have an ASURA table staffed during Staff BBQs, Day at the Capitol, works with HR to publicize the association. Secretarial tasks include reviewing the various letters that go out during re-enrollment and sending thank you letters to donors who donate $100+.
• Luncheon & Special Events Committee – this committee plans and makes the arrangements for the social events held during the year, e.g., Meet and Greet, Luncheons, Holiday event. Venues must be found and booked; menus selected for the luncheons.
• Obituary Committee – this committee ferrets out obituaries for those associated in some way with ASU, edits the obituary to highlight ASU and then posts the results, both by email and on the web. This has historically been done by one person. We are hoping to get a committee of 4-6 to spread the effort around.

Many of the routine tasks undertaken by these committees have step-by-step instructions for how to do the task.

To volunteer for any of these openings or to get more information just reply to this E-News.