Volunteers Needed

We Need YOU!

It takes an Army of Volunteers to make our activities a success: almost 100 Interest Groups, Monthly Meetings, Coffee Mornings, pub quizzes, social events, outings etc – we can’t do it alone! To manage our activities we have a committee and also 6 teams. Please see the brief descriptions of each team’s work below to see how we work and where we we need help, and then please look lower down where we list the vacancies we are particularly anxious to fill at the moment

Groups Team

The groups team is responsible for:

  • talking to existing and new members and helping them to find and join our Interest Groups, for example at Coffee Mornings and Monthly Meetings.
  • finding out what new groups our members would like and helping to start them
  • ensuring that groups-related data is kept up to date on the website and our other IT systems
  • responding to requests for help or advice from Group Leaders or members
  • responding to incoming emails to the Groups team, one of the official Chichester U3A email addresses

The Social team looks after all of our social events. This includes:

  • Our two regular monthly activities open to all members:  the Coffee Morning held on the first Tuesday of each month, and the Monthly Meeting held on the third Thursday of each month.  
  • Trips and outings. This includes visits to the local Chichester Festival and Minerva theatres, visits to local flower displays (eg Arundel, for the tulips) or further afield (eg Leonardslee gardens)
  • our regular monthly quiz night at the Chichester Inn
  • meeters and greaters who welcome new members and introduce them to others
  • arrange tea teams for events
  • Christmas lunch
  • annual thank you tea
  • summer party

The work of membership team includes:

  • answering queries about membership
  • welcoming new members
  • arranging membership subscriptions
  • maintaining our list of volunteers

This is our publicity department. They gather information about what we are doing and publish a fortnightly bulletin, and a reflective magazine twice a year.

As you would expect we rely a lot on IT. We have a database of members, we manage our website, and we provide support to the other teams.

Governance team

We are a large organisation with approaching one thousand members.. It is important that we maintain good modern working practices and the governance team tries to ensure this.

Your Committee comprises 4 officers (Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer) and up to an additional 7 trustees. They meet once a month. We also welcome members who wish to visit us to see how the u3a is run. 

If you are interested please address any expressions of interest to our chair

  • We have a small dedicated group of people behind the website and the bulletin, but we need more in order to produce a newsletter/magazine of quality that will be informative, fun to read and a great calling card for potential new members. So, we are urgently looking for members to join the Communications Team. It’s great fun and puts you at the heart of Chichester u3a. Whether your interest is in writing, interviewing and reporting (written, audio or video), photography, design, desktop publishing, or just brainstorming ideas,
  • We are currently looking for one or two people to take over from the current Speakers’ team within the Social team for our Monthly Talks.  They have sourced speakers for the remainder of 2024 and for most of 2025, but they would appreciate having a new team to take over from them.  A new team will undoubtedly have fresh ideas and if you enjoy our Monthly Talks you might consider taking an active interest in planning and booking speakers. 
  • We have an efficient and pleasant team who look after the audiovisual requirements for our Monthly Talks, ensuring that our speakers have everything they need. Would you like to attend one of our talks and meet our supporting technical team?
  • Our Tuesday Coffee Mornings, held monthly at the Minerva Theatre, are attended by about 70 members, amongst whom are new members or even those looking to join.  We always need “Meeters and Greeters” and if you offer your help at one of these events our Committee members will be there to give you information about our activities that day so that you can welcome newcomers. 
  • Our IT team is now very important to our success.  The team members run the website, our database, our email and communication systems and we are always pleased when members offer technical, as opposed to marketing, IT skills.