Central Oregon Governing Council Meeting Minutes
Jan. 26, 2026
Affinity Bend
PRESENT: CO - Susan Goracke, President; Mark Goracke, Faith Hall, Michael Graham, Jim McDonald, Melissa Elliot, Wendy Chase.
UO - Brenda McDonald
Zoom: UO - Sandra Gladney
Introductions and welcome for Sandra. Wendy ex-officio member.
MINUTES OF 11/17/25 MEETING
Members served is the number sent to OSHER in the year. 138 members served as of November.
Approved as amended.
Council vacancy
Susan asked Joe Costello about being on Council. He declined; he is moving to Portland.
Brenda and Susan will continue to look for someone who hasn’t been on Council but is involved in our programs.
Michael suggested that we find someone who is media-savvy for membership work. That person could have resources for outreach in the community. Susan hopes for someone with vision.
The question arose: are we getting too big? Some people may have dropped out because they couldn’t get into a class. Brenda noted that the only major capacity issue we had was for one term in history class prior to moving into the larger room. While some smaller venues do require advance registrations that limit the capacity (such as field trips and documentaries) we don’t have large scale capacity issues in core courses.
Gay Sommer, Julie Scholler and Les Netland were suggested as possible Council members.
The need for a Council member can be suggested in Brenda’s news email.
Membership report
Mark called about 15 people whose memberships have lapsed. There were varied responses. Some were glad to be reminded. One is too busy. One said there are not enough classes. There were several non-responses.
Brenda will take Mark’s list to enter the names into the database, so they won’t be harassed later on and we note their feedback. She will send names of people who registered for Experience OLLI to Mark.
Leigh Leuthold has offered to help with membership.
Brenda’s report
Question: Do we want another Experience OLLI? This one in January didn’t bring in as many new members as Experience OLLIs usually do.
We have 117 current active members. 149 were served this fiscal year. Our goal is 195.
2025 - In January there were 127 active members, with 154 members served.
2024 – in January, we had 102 active members, 128 served.
We have 4 new members from Experience OLLI, 1 new member from a referral.
September OLLI’s usually do really well.
Improving online exposure was discussed.
Brenda identified the top 92 employers in town and sent flyers to their Human Resources departments.
Do we want another Experience OLLI sooner rather than later? Eugene does one, by a different name, at the beginning of each term. This was the first one we have done in January. We like the idea of doing an Experience OLLI the last week of winter term rather than early in spring term so new members could start right at the beginning spring term. We need to explain that it’s OK if you missed the first class; the classes aren’t strongly dependent upon the previous class.
We need to notify the people who signed up at the January Redmond Library event of how much OLLI offers on Zoom. The Redmond Library talk number was 42 people. There were no new members from it.
Sandra: maybe we could work with the Redmond library to do events there?
The group also discussed other ideas: How about outreach to religious centers etc.? And the Redmond Senior Center. We could talk to our Primary Care Physicians as a referral source. Brenda could include a reminder to share OLLI with our PCPs in her weekly e-news.
Lunch n Learn is at Larkspur weekly - could “we” be a speaker?
A point was made that some are put off by UO affiliation. That came up several times at the recent Experience OLLI. Some is prejudice, some is ignorance.
The revised flat flyer has more focus on Central Oregon, less emphasis on UO.
We discussed wearing our own college/university clothes to the next Experience OLLI to help make the point that OLLI CO does not mean required alignment with UO as students or alumni.
Discussion - Hold an Experience OLLI the week of spring break. Larkspur is very iffy.
Suggested dates: March 26, 27 or 30. Location ideas: Holy Communion Church, Elks Lodge, Redmond Library, Affinity Lobby. Monday 30th seemed to be a popular date.
If at Affinity in the lobby, it could be a drop-in info fair format.
Sandra’s report
- March 16th the UO Vice Provost and Sandra will come to our meeting,
- Budget report. Q1 coming soon from Brenda; Q2 in February.
- Strategic planning - a new document will be forthcoming, by site.
- OLLI will continue through UO’s department of Continuing and Professional Education. It is an important part of UO’s community involvement.
- The OLLI budget is in deficit, not the numbers desired. OLLI lost half of its membership in the pandemic. The lowest was in 2022. Portland just started in 2022. We have recovered to about ¾ of pre-pandemic membership levels.
- No longer having a dedicated space is a significant issue in Central Oregon.
- What is a sustainable membership number goal for OLLI CO? There is a 20% attrition rate nationally.
- There membership fees are the same at all OLLI-UO three sites of Eugene, Bend/CO and Portland. Strategic planning has to work with that. Cost of doing business by community might be different, so should that be a factor? She wants to work with 2-3 people per site on this work. Waiting on the new Associate Vice Provost to move this project forward.
In answer to a question: Quasi-endowment is like a savings account. Not protected funds. The foundation takes it on and manages it. There is long term investment and donor money - in an investment pool we can withdraw from annually.
Action items:
Susan: Find a new possible Governing Council member.
Mar. 16 1-2:30 is the Council’s next meeting.
Adjourned
Respectfully submitted
Faith Hall
