As we have a lot of members attending on a regular basis we have a rota for filling the urn, acting as a host and providing lunch for visiting speakers.  This ensures that meetings go smoothly and helping in this way is really important and much appreciated by all.   The roles are not too onerous and hopefully everyone should only need to do it once per year. 

Urn Rota Guidelines and Good Practice

• Three or four people on the rota each month each with a different role on the day.
• Each group on the rota is contacted a week before the meeting as a reminder.
• When we have a speaker, we provide lunch. This includes in-house speakers, but not 4 corners. Dietary requirements are given ahead of time.
• If you are the one to bring lunch for the speaker just double up on what you would normally bring for yourself. Set up a lunch table for the speaker, yourself and the Chair (or other member of the committee), who will join you with their own lunch that they will bring themselves. Make sure you introduce yourself to the speaker at the start of the day so they know who you are. Find the speaker and the Chair at lunch time, they will be tired and in need of a sit down! Clear away afterwards.
• We need one person downstairs, where you sign the book as you come into the museum, to greet anybody who’s new or somebody who’s forgotten where the lift is, generally be welcoming and helpful as people arrive.
• One person arrives earlier to get the urn out and get the water boiling, arrange the cups biscuits, tea, coffee and milk. These are all provided by the committee so no need to worry about that.
• The last person stays on till the end of the meeting and does all the tidying up of the urn, takes the tea towels home to wash them and return them the following month.
• We need everybody to take note of which date they are on and if they can’t make that date then to arrange a swap yourself. You can swap in person at a meeting, use Facebook or call or message any member directly.
• Tina does put the rota in the newsletter with the next three or four months dates and names so there’s plenty of notice and plenty of opportunity for you to read and check which date you are down for.
• There is a Top Tips sheet in the Guild store cupboard for reference

The rota does enable a nice smooth running of our meetings and we on the committee really do appreciate everyone’s help.

If you’re on the list and don’t feel that you’re able to participate in the rota at all can you please let us know.