Membership Update

Membership Update By Donna Holmes and Marty McKnew

Donna Holmes

Welcome to a new branch year, and your membership team is full of new leaders:

  • Jane Cooley, who has done Sunshine for over a decade, is now playing with the next generation of membership, Ashley’s daughter!  We all owe her our gratitude for everything she has done in this position.
  • Nancy McCabe volunteered to take Jane’s place, and the transfer of duties has occurred.  So, need a card sent?  Contact Nancy.
  • Sharon Anderson is giving up Membership Treasurer and moving on to????  We will need her help for so long she won’t feel gone for many months.
  • Donna Holmes, in addition to co-chair of membership, is taking Sharon’s position and plans on doing it for a long time.  The advantage for her is most everything is done from home, where she can keep her husband company, and she loves this kind of data-heavy work.
  • Marty McKnew is the other co-chair of membership, and we all know how capable Marty is!
  • Neither Marty nor Donna has ever worked with membership at the branch level. However, Marty served as Membership Vice President for CA AAUW for two years.  It is a good opportunity to learn more about AAUW and support the mission.

Membership History from the 19th Century to the 21st and Beyond

We will be exploring our membership history each month to illuminate how changes have worked over the last 140 years.  First:  In the beginning, members were hand picked by existing members and had to have attended particular universities.  The San Francisco Branch of AAUW is the second oldest branch in the United States, organized in 1886 as the Pacific Organization of Collegiate Alumnae.  The members were from UC Berkeley, Mills College and Stanford University.  We could still have Angela Scarlett, and Donna’s great-grandmother who attended California Collegiate starting in 1863, merging with Mills in 1864 — unfortunately she died in 1886.  Donna’s grandmother, Rebecca Suhr, was the first woman to graduate from the Stanford School of Law in 1903 and became a member.

We will move further into the 20th century in a future article. Stay tuned!