MINUTES OF A MEETING
OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
RANDONNEURS USA, INC.
Held: January 12, 2022
A meeting of the RUSA Board of Directors was convened by Zoom/ telephone conference and called to order by the President at 17:03 PST.
The Directors in attendance were:
• Dan Driscoll
• Rob Hawks
• Charlie Martin
• Vincent (Vinny) Muoneke
• Dawn Piech
• Tim Sullivan
• Dave Thompson
The Board welcomed the new members, Charlie Martin and Vinny Muoneke
A motion was made and passed to approve the meeting minutes for December 8, 2021.
The Board approved an e-vote replacing Travis Mitchell as the RBA for Gainesville Florida with Paul Rozelle on a temporary basis until a permanent RBA can be appointed.
The next order of business was the selection of officers for 2022. The following officers were elected:
President – Dave Thompson
Vice-President – Tim Sullivan
Treasurer – Dan Driscoll
Secretary – Tim Sullivan
Charlie Martin will transition to be the acting Secretary in a few months as agreed between him and Tim Sullivan
The Board then voted on the recipient of the American Randonneur Award for 2021. Nine worthy candidates were nominated by the membership and the Board chose one member for the Award who will be announced in an upcoming issue of American Randonneur.
Dan had circulated financial reports consisting of a Statement of Activity YTD Comparison and a Statement of Financial Position Comparison that were reviewed.
Rob reported on his activities as the RBA Liaison. He reported that there was a robust discussion on the RBA Google list on registering riders showing the viability of the list. He will be holding a Zoom meeting for RBAs on January 30, 2022 with a RBA presenting a discussion of the use of EPP and Deb Banks discussing the new gravel program. He did conduct a Zoom meeting with RBAs in December that discussed RBA goals. He will be asking RBAs for 2022 goals. He recently interviewed Bill Bryant on the equipment to use at PBP and will be creating a YouTube video of the interview. A second PBP preparation seminar will be held for members on February 6, 2022.
Charlie Martin presented a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. The Web Team presented the new member getting started page to RBAs Wei Sun and Jeff Newberry who both liked the plan to let new members when joining obtain information about regions local to the new member including contact information for the region and the RBA and event information. The Web Team has been working with the Gravel Committee on implementing the new gravel program. Charlie has the routes database ready to launch and RBAs will soon be able to start upgrading their routes for gravel. The team and the Gravel Committee are still working on a couple of details before the team can proceed further with gravel. The Web Team is still working on UAF/Audax support. In the interim the Routes Committee will manage the Audax routes manually and results submission will also be handled manually. Paul Lieberman has adapted a couple of more features for the Drupal 9 upgrade as the team continues to upgrade the infrastructure. Man-Fai resolved a number of issues to make page headers and footers consistent across the website.
Dawn had provided reports on the December issue of Between Controls. The issue was sent to 3456 members with a 69% open rate and a 23% click rate. The Advertiser link had a 14.6% click rate. The call for members to submit photos was positive .Dawn reviewed her process in creating each edition. She asked if she should provide the Board with more time to review the proposed topics. The consensus was that since she was doing a great job that she should continue as she deems best. Dawn reviewed with the Board the January issue of Between Controls that will be sent soon.
Dave reported that the Perms Committee wants to propose a change in the Perms rules to allow a member to start a perm anywhere on the route so long as the member rides by each control. .Dave will request the Perms Committee to write a formal rule proposal that will then be sent to the Rules Committee for review and comments
Dave circulated a summary of the 2021 goals set by the Board. One of those goals was to increase promotional activities and Dan noted that we lost one ability to promote RUSA by the fact that there is no longer a vendor for selling RUSA jerseys and shorts. Dave asked each Board member to review the 2021 goals and provide specifics on how we can improve on reaching those goals as well as listing 2022 goals. Dave asked each Board member to email their thoughts and comments in advance of the February 9, 2022 Board meeting.
Next the Board discussed the use of the Google calendar. Each Board member is to review the calendar and see if their respective annual functions can be listed on the calendar as a reminder to perform a given task.
The Board had been presented with a proposal for new RUSA logo. It was decided not to pursue the idea of creating a new logo.
Finally the thought of providing a renewal notice to 2021 members who have not yet renewed their membership. It was decided that the Membership Committee should decide what action to take.
The meeting was adjourned at 19:06 PST