November 10, 2021 Board Meeting

MINUTES OF A MEETING

OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

RANDONNEURS USA, INC.

 

Held: November 10, 2021

A meeting of the RUSA Board of Directors was convened by Zoom/ telephone conference and called to order by the President at 17:00 PST.

The Directors in attendance were:

• Debra Banks

• Dan Driscoll

• John Lee Ellis

• Rob Hawks

• Dawn Piech

• Tim Sullivan

• Dave Thompson

A motion was made and passed to approve the meeting minutes for October 13, 2021.

Dan had circulated financial reports consisting of a Statement of Activity YTD Comparison and a Statement of Financial Position Comparison that were reviewed.

Rob has scheduled an end of the year voluntary virtual meeting with the RBAs for December 5, 2021. So far 14 RBAs have stated that they will attend.

Rob presented a summary of the PBP prep seminar held on October 30, 2021. There were 183 unique logins which included individuals from 6 other countries. 108 people responded to the post seminar survey. 47 of those learned of the seminar solely from their local club. 66 of the participants are either planning on riding PBP for the first time or are interested in PBP. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest, the median rating was an 8. Rob is planning future PBP seminars with 2-3 presenters with each seminar lasting an hour rather than 2 hours.

There was discussion about providing information to members about advocacy, how to respond to incidents, and how to take care of themselves, including uninsured motorists coverage and PIP insurance.

Also discussed was creating a video on randonneuring or PBP that members could post a link to the video on other web sites, including Facebook, that would direct the viewer to the RUSA website and also posting on the RUSA web site links to articles or videos on randonneuring or PBP.

John Lee provided a written report on the activities of the Web Team. Paul Lieberman’s coding for perm registration allows members renewing their perm program membership in December will be renewed for 2022. Charlie Martin aided Chris Nadovich of Pennsylvania Randonneurs with some questions about SmartWaiver. Charlie also developed a membership check for use by RBAs in verifying rider memberships. Paul Lieberman has tested out upgrading Drupal 9 in the development environment. Once there is an upgrade to the module that allows users to log in using their email address or RUSA number that is compatible with Drupal 9 then the web team will upgrade to Drupal 9. A member is reviewing open Bugzilla issues to see which ones can be closed. The web team plans to save the team name and destination for flèches into the RUSA database so they can be exported to the spreadsheet that is sent to the ACP.

The Web Team is working on a design document for implementing a one time or short term trial RUSA membership. The Board can then decide which alternatives it wishes to pursue.

There was discussion on providing more guidance and a review of existing procedures for waivers.

Dawn had provided the Board with a preview of the November edition of Between Controls enewsletter which she has ready to send out to members on November 11, 2021. Several suggestions were made to the edition. The October edition was sent out to 3245 members and was opened by 58.2% of the recipients, with a click rate of 10.1%. A 5th special election issue was sent to members on November 1, 2021.

Deb provided a report from the gravel committee comprised of Dawn, Rob, John Lee, Greg Smith, Rob Welsh and herself. After 4 meetings the committee has agreed to the following:

  1. Extra time should be awarded for gravel events. After reviewing several proposals for calculating how much extra time should be granted, the committee decided that extra time should be granted based solely on the total unpaved distance in the event. The time is extended based on a reduced speed that has been determined by the length of the gravel or unpaved sections on the route.
  2. Amount of gravel required to be considered a gravel event. The committee has proposed that no minimum percentage of gravel is necessary for a route to be a gravel route. There was discussion amongst the Board on whether there should be a minimum amount of gravel in order to qualify the route for a gravel award. The committee will consider this as it looks at the intersection of the gravel program with awards.
  3. The RBA can choose how to calendar the event that uses a route containing gravel segments. Calendaring the event as an ACP brevet would allow no extra time, but would when calendared as a RUSA brevet or populaire.
  4. Creating a possible tool kit for route creators and designers with a rubric for them to look at when designing routes.
  5. Asking the Web Team commence working on implementing gravel events in conjunction with awards, once the Board has approved the full details of the program.

The gravel committee still needs to discuss specific gravel awards, how to roll out the program, including grandfathering completed rides, and marketing the gravel program.

A motion was passed to adopt the gravel committee report.

Dave then reported that so far there have been 32 votes cast for the RBA Liaison position and 335 online plus 5 email votes for the open Board positions.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 19:12 PST