MINUTES OF A MEETING
OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
RANDONNEURS USA, INC.
Held: April 13, 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 PDT.
The Directors in attendance were:
• Dan Driscoll
• Rob Hawks
• Charlie Martin
• Vincent (Vinny) Muoneke
• Dawn Piech
• Tim Sullivan
• Dave Thompson
A motion was made and passed to approve the meeting minutes for February 10, 2022, as well as the meeting minutes for March 9, 2022.
The Board approved an e-vote for Chris Nadovich to succeed as RBA of Eastern Pennsylvania, effective October 1, 2022.
The Board approved an e-vote regarding an individual R-12.
The Board approved an e-vote amending and extending the gravel program rules. RUSAB and RUSAP events calendared using gravel rules will award the new time bonus of 1 additional minute per unpaved kilometer. Additionally, gravel points will now be awarded for unpaved distance in SR600 permanents.
A motion was made and passed for Charlie Martin to succeed Tim Sullivan as Secretary, effective immediately.
Dan, as Treasurer, provided the Board with a monthly Statement of Activity Year to Date Comparison Report, a Financial Position Comparison Report, and current balances in both the Bank of America checking and savings accounts as well as the PayPal account. He included some comments about RUSA's financial position and answered some questions.
Dave is managing the replacement of Janice as editor for American Randonneur. A qualified candidate has volunteered and is working on the transition with Dave and the American Randonneur team.
Dave ordered vests from T2S that RUSA has had before. They are EN1150 compliant, with no pockets, and with slits at the back. They are the best that RUSA can do at this time, and members will have access to them if they want them. Once these are in hand RUSA will work with someone on a vest that has pockets.
Rob reported on his activities as RBA Liaison. The Maryland Capital region expects to send an RBA application later this year. Chris Nadovich will become RBA of Eastern Pennsylvania effective October 1. Rob has finished collecting information about the incorporated/non-incorporated status of each RUSA region. The next step will be to solicit information about the advantages of incorporating in order to answer the question of why RBAs would want to do so if they have not already. The ultimate goal is to empower and facilitate regions incorporating if they so desire.
Charlie presented a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. The requirements for the gravel program have been solidified and the full implementation is nearly complete. Partial Audax support is in place, and the next step will be to allow calendaring UAFJ (junior) events to bring them to parity with UAFB events. The Brevet Coordinator will be kept in the loop for any aspects involving UAF results export. A one-week membership feature continues to be a low-priority item compared to other ongoing projects, however in order to make progress the Web Team has requested direction from stakeholders such as the Brevet Coordinator and Membership Committee who have a better understanding of how this needs to fit in with existing processes. Rob has some suggestions on how to proceed. The Web Team is working on moving Paul Lieberman's private Drupal repository to a shared location where it can be maintained by the whole team.
Charlie discussed an initiative to address quirks and inconsistencies in time limits for permanents and calendared events. The RUSA website has multiple implementations that don't always agree, and it's difficult to nail down an authoritative specification for each type of ride. Quirks include the fact that RUSAB events calendared as 200 km or 400 km match ACP's generous time allowance, but slightly longer RUSAB events actually have a lower time allowance. The initiative would remove this "time penalty" for slightly longer events. It would also attempt to consolidate the time specifications for permanents, RUSAB/RUSAP events, and ACP events as much as possible so that there are fewer overall rule sets to understand. John Lee Ellis is drafting a proposal.
Dawn had provided reports on the March issue of Between Controls. The issue was sent to 3,085 members with a 67% open rate and a 9.2% click rate. The top 3 areas that received clicks were the new randonneurs-usa@ Google list (25.1% with 90 clicks), the YouTube PBP seminar video (14.8% with 53 clicks), and the RUSA calendar search (12.0% with 43 clicks). The eoGEAR ad received 31 clicks. The April edition will be sent on April 14, 2022. Dawn makes a process note that the Membership Committee is always sent a draft for additional input before finalizing content, and also that Bill Bryant has agreed to provide an initial scan of each edition before forwarding to the Board to review. Dawn invited all RUSA Committee Chairs to submit content for 2022 and is expecting submissions from Greg Smith and Nigel Greene.
Dawn also reported on her activities as Incident Liaison, detailing the number of incidents in each of the past 4 years. Dan suggests that membership may find some aggregated report useful. Dave is working with Jake on improving the results extract so that it's easier to proof. Pete will take over the monthly reporting and then the incident work from Dawn.
Dawn had drafted and distributed an awards survey to include in a future Between Controls issue. The Board is interested in regularly engaging membership and soliciting feedback that the Board can then digest and incorporate into its processes and decisions. The current focus is on the awards program and its value to members. Each Board member was given an opportunity to provide feedback on the survey draft. There were some concerns that the questions don't provide sufficient voice to members who could provide perspective on some topics of interest, but overall the consensus was that the survey as it stands opens the door to valuable feedback that the Board can drill into and explore further in follow-up surveys. Dan offered to crunch some numbers for trinket sales in the RUSA store as supplementary data.
Dave shared the status of the RBA Responsibilities and Member Responsibilities documentation efforts. Dave and Rob had discussed the RBA Responsibilities and found that most of the content was already covered in the RBA Procedures manual and/or the RBA application. New content will mostly consist of incorporation and financial best practices. Dave and Rob will meet with John Lee Ellis to discuss updating several outdated pieces of the current documentation. Dave shared Vinny's distillation of the Member Responsibilities documentation and had the Board discuss. The discussion was a mix of what content to keep or refine, as well as where it made the most sense to organize it. Much of the content overlaps with the already existing Rules for Riders, but some of it applies more generally to "members" which includes non-rider roles. Dave, Vinny, and Dawn will work on moving some of the language over to the Mission, Values, and Objectives. Rules for Riders will be reviewed to see if content should be updated to address redundancy. Dave and Rob will follow up on an item concerning RBA responsibilities. Once this new content is ready, membership will be informed to solicit feedback.
Dave wished Charlie luck with the meeting minutes, and adjourned the meeting at 19:03 PDT.