More than a year ago the Office of Human Resources (OHR) ceased supplying UMRA with contact information for persons who had retired from the University in the previous month. This HIPAA-driven change in policy deprived UMRA of our primary mode of contacting retirees to invite them to join us.

To compensate for this change, UMRA has proposed to University administration that we supply a letter of invitation, which OHR will then send to retirees. We were delighted to hear recently that the University has approved our proposal, which will permit us to reach our target audience while avoiding the release of identity and contact information of all retirees to UMRA. We are now hammering out details of implementation with OHR and expect to begin mailings to new retirees very soon.

To make joining UMRA more enticing and thus introducing more people to the range of our activities, the Board has decided to eliminate the first-year membership fee. Changes in the website have been made and the UMRA brochure has been reprinted to reflect this new approach to recruitment. Also, a supply of brochures has been delivered to OHR so that counselors can distribute them to retirees when they have their final consultation.

Employees who attended OHR Pre-Retirement Seminars on February 27 and March 6 were welcomed by UMRA membership committee members, who offered to send a Retirement Kit by email to those who supplied their name and email address. The Retirement Kit is an annotated directory of active web links on a broad spectrum of retirement matters, which will be of interest to people considering retirement or already retired. The Retirement Kit is posted on the UMRA website in the category of Member Services/Resources for Retirees

— John Anderson, Membership Committee chair