July 9, 2025 Board Meeting

Randonneurs USA Board of Director Minutes

July 9, 2025

 

  1. Call to order: The meeting on July 9, 2025 was called to order at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, over Zoom. The following members were present.
    1. Dawn Piech
    2. Bill Bryant
    3. Charlie Martin
    4. Chris Argo
    5. Gardner Duvall
    6. Dave Thompson
    7. John Lee Ellis
       
  2. The minutes of the June 2025 Board meeting were approved.
     
  3. The Treasurer submitted a written report for June.
     
  4. Gardner reported that the Financial Audit Committee received the May Treasurer’s Report before the Board meeting, and had a brief discussion about it.
     
  5. Chris made the RBA-L report. A replacement RBA for FL:Southern is anticipated.
     
  6. Dawn reported on the upcoming edition of Between Controls, and on the statistics for uptake of the June edition with a 78% open rate. She also discussed she will be having a zoom this fall with the 4 person Between Controls review team to brainstorm this monthly resource to the membership. The compilation of the fleche photos received in the spring will be highlighted in the July Between Controls issue. Dawn reported this call for photos was well-received and she looks to continue this every spring with a goal to get it in the June Between Controls issue.
     
  7. The Web Team submitted a written report. Charlie orally reported that major RBA functions are now accessed from authenticated accounts. Result submissions can now be submitted through this function, as can event calendars. All pages of RUSA.org now provide a link to the member’s web account. During a website update RUSA.org went down, and the Web team is working on a process to address outages.
     
  8. A draft of the Board’s report on gender treatment by RUSA was sent to the member-composed consultation group to review and comment on the communication, before the planned public release in August.
     
  9. RUSA’s privacy policy was discussed, with planned further consideration of the subject.
     
  10. The Board discussed an updated Award Philosophy provided by the Awards Review Committee. A motion to adopt this proposal was tabled in order to assess how an existing award compares to the terms of that proposed philosophy.
     
  11. Dawn provided a written report on RUSA’s presence at the Philly Bike Expo, which was discussed. Possible avenues to extend this outreach to other venues was also briefly discussed. She discussed options with the BOD to consider in 2026 and beyond in having possibly 2 larger expos per year. In addition, Dawn also expressed she is working on a process that members and interested RBA's may obtain the materials for any booth to use. Dawn is also finalizing an article for American Randonneur about our inaugural exposition in March.
     
  12. The Board again discussed the possibility of obtaining an AI-generated first draft of meeting minutes, and agreed to continue that discussion by email.
     
  13. The next meetings were scheduled for August 18, 2025, and September 17, 2025.
     
  14. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:03 Eastern time, without objection.