UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

John Smith is the webmaster here and my husband. I help out as much as I can with adding new members and details to the website. Please bear with us if things are not moving as quickly as you would like, but we are both working full time and have a four year old daughter.

John has now added eight newsletters to our website http://www.keratoconus-group.org.uk/index.html We do appreciate the recycling aspect of printing the newsletters and the cost of sending them, but after sending out a questionnaire only 3 people out of 2000 wanted it to be sent electronically1 If you do NOT want us to send you any more printed newsletters but would rather us email it to you, or you are going to look on the website for it, please let Anne (Anne@keratoconus-group.org.uk) know and I will note not to send you one.

There has been talk about members not being aware of the committee members. On our home page above there is a section about the group with a link to a page with a list of the committee members. We are looking into having a small photo of each committee member so that you will know who we are, with a little section about them, but will look into doing this after the AGM as they can change.

At present we do not plan to put the minutes on-line as there is no jurisdiction to tell us that we have to. We will be looking into organising providing details of our finances, but again will look into this fully after the AGM to establish the best way to do this.

If there is anything that you think we should be doing, please let us know. Steven and Lea we have been listening to you thank you.

Claire Xxx

Steven,

All newsletters which I have produced are now online, alas I can't go back to issue 1, as I don't have a copy of them. The previous newsletter editor hasn't had anything to do with the group for some years now.

As for postage, we actually get a significant discount of our postage costs because we send so many newsletters at a time. The last time we looked in to this, it would have cost us more money if a small percentage of our members were to opt to recieve it electronically!

It may cost more, but what percentage of membership struggle to physically read a printed newsletter in the current format, I have no shame in saying I can't read a word of it unless its a good day n my contact goes in. Therefore reading the newsletter in hard copy is very hit n miss for me x

Thanks for putting them online John, very useful.

Space_cadet,

As Claire has pointed out recently; when we last surveyed our members, only 3 out of about 2000 people opted for email delivery of newsletters. It really surprised me, I'll say now! I think as far as the numbers go, we could certainly start sending out 100-200 newsletters electronically without losing money, but then what would we do when people's emails bounce?

This happens all the time by the way, mailbox full, spam filters etc., or just changing ISP. At least with Royal Mail movers, Royal Mail themselves will let us know a new address (if we pay them to clean our database!)

I'm fairly new to this group, how do I register for the newsletter? Also is the AGM still open for registration or can you just turn up?

Sorry for the novice questions. Thanks in advance.

If you e-mail me your postal address anne@keratoconus-group.org.uk, I'll send you our introductory information and add you to our mailing list for the future. And you're welcome at the AGM. We asked people to let us know if they're coming to get an idea of numbers.
Anne