Frequently Asked Questions > The difference between a Participant and a Contact

A participant is a person actively involved in the U3A. A participant pays fees, may enrol in a class and may also lead a class. A participant is said to be financial if their fees for the current year are paid.

A contact is a person not actively involved in the U3A but has some association with it. They might be suppliers, tradespeople or politicians. They are not financial members of the U3A. Think of your contacts list as the U3A's virtual Teledex.

A contact may be assigned one or more Tags. A tag is simply a means of grouping like contacts together. A tag might be the organisation to which they belong, the type of trades person they are etc. etc.

Interestingly, Tags have two fields, Can Lead? and Can Enrol?. A contact may therefore be created that is allowed to participate in classes either as a leader and/or a student. However, a Contact is not a Participant and it is important to understand the difference.

These differences are summarised in the following table...

Property	Participant	Contact	Comment
Use Member Portal	Yes	No	A Contact cannot log into the Member Portal.
Pays Membership Fees	Yes	No	A Contact cannot be assigned a membership fee or be receipted.
Can be grouped	Limited	Yes	Participants can be life members, financial, leaders, clerks etc but the ability to group is limited. At a systems level this is important so as to avoid any perception of discrimination. Contacts are grouped by assigning each contact one or more tags.
Can enrol in class	Yes	Optional	A contact may enrol in classes if it is assigned a tag with the field Can Enrol? ticked.
Can lead a class	Yes	Optional	A contact may be a class leader if it is assigned a tag with the field Can Lead? ticked.
Include in Auto-Enrolments	Yes	No	A contact is not automatically enrolled in a class. Rather they a manually added via Enrol Participants. They cannot be enrolled via the Member Portal.
Enrolments brought forward from term to term	Yes	Yes	Once enrolled, both participants and contacts remain enrolled for the year.
Enrol in Multi-Campus Course	Yes	No	Contact enrolment is limited to the local U3A only.
Receives enrolment confirmation email	Yes	Yes	A Contact will receive enrolment confirmations if a they have an email address.
Receives leader reports	Yes	Manual Only	A Contact does not automatically receive leader reports. However, persons with access to the administrative website may request reports on behalf of the Contact who will receive them via their email address.