As the Membership Secretary for Fife u3a the Beacon database management system enables me to manage the full data structure for storing our members’ details, enabling me to access and amend the data stored at any time

Compared to the traditional approaches of storing data in Excel sheets etc this system has a number of advantages.

• Organisational data is always susceptible to losses and therefore a proper system is highly recommended when a lot of data exists.
• When the Membership Secretary role passes to another member, the information is easily accessed and transferred with the minimum of difficulty
• The download of Members’ addresses for the TAM Magazine has proved invaluable as it certainly saves time compared to downloading from Excel and having to amend names, for instance for two people at the same address
• Send emails in bulk has proved a boon. The option of being able to access the email delivery gives me the opportunity of amending email addresses where applicable and also to ascertain how many members actually open their emails