Wirral u3a now maintains its membership records on Beacon – a secure database set-up and maintained by the Third Age Trust. This helps ensure we observe data protection laws with members’ data no longer stored on individual computers but on a secure central fileserver.

Individual members of Wirral u3a are able to log onto the site and carry out various actions. One of these is the ability to both check and update your membership details. The committee would urge you to register for the members portal and regularly check/update your details. It is quite possible that, for example, telephone numbers change. Many of you joined when our membership form only asked for one phone number and provided a landline (BT) number. If you have a mobile number, please add this as it can enable event organisers to contact you for last minute changes or find out if there is a transport problem if you do not appear for a coach trip.

Furthermore, some of the group leaders and event organisers have expressed concerns over what they should do in an emergency. Remember, like you, these are ordinary members of the u3a and do not have specialised training. Therefore, it would be greatly appreciated if, when updating your membership details, you add an emergency contact.

The link below should take you to our branch's portal registration page

.https://u3abeacon.org.uk/u3aportal.php?u3a=794&sc=QDGJ

There is a detailed description provided in the following document on how to register for the Members Portal Hopefully, the set of steps to register for the first time under 10.2.b will be sufficiently clear.

https://u3abeacon.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360007368138-10-2-Members-Portal

If you click on 'register for a membership account' it will open a box where you need to enter five bits of personal data. If you try to register and it does not work, please contact Giles who is our main system administrator. You can do this by going to the Contacts page and clicking on the link the Wirral u3a Treasurer. If you are successful, it will ask you to create a personal password and later log-ons will only require your email address and this password. As a security measure, to register successfully, these five pieces of data have to exactly match those currently held in Beacon and problems may well arise because one of the five pieces of information has been incorrectly entered in transferring your membership record to Beacon.

Currently the Portal also allows you to see what groups are active and details of how to contact them. The intention is to add other functions in the future and we will keep you updated via the newsletter or website.