Randonneurs USA Board of Director Minutes

April 8th, 2026

1. Call to order: The meeting on April 8th, 2026 was called to order at 8:00 p.m. Eastern over Zoom. The following members were present:

   1. Dawn Piech
   1. Charlie Martin
   1. Dave Thompson
   1. Emily O’Brien
   1. Noah Swartz
   1. John Lee Ellis
   1. Chris Argo
2. The minutes of the March Board meeting were approved

3. Dave presented the March financial report

   1. It was noted that the accounting of how ankle bands were paid for on behalf of local clubs confuses the actual RUSA store revenue
   1. This was decided to be acceptable accounting, but should be noted when comparing year over year changes in revenue if we retain this approach.
   1. Dave and Chris will review and decide on accounting approach
   1. There was additionally interest to see how RUSA store sales are doing overall, and Dave took an action item to compile a sales report

4. John Lee Ellis presented the web team report

   1. The web team is preparing to launch new code and documentation for time calculations on the website that should have consistent numbers for all event types
   1. American Randonneur PDFs will now be posted on the website 1 month after the first mailing
   1. The web content task force has continued to meet and iterate on website improvements, including discussing a number of mock-ups for new site layouts
   1. Shaun Ivory is assisting with updating the elevation numbers for registered permanents and we are making good progress. Shaun updates ridewithgps and Dave updates the RUSA permanent data.

5. Chris presented the RBA Liaison report

   1. Little to report as RBAs are heads down organizing and administering their early season events
   1. New RBA onboarding is going well and RBAs seem engaged
   1. Dave has received and is mailing out 2024 R5000, R10000 to individuals and Fleche certificates to Rob Hawks

6. Awards Committee

   1. The new Awards Review Committee ran into an email problem delaying review of the grand randonnée award, they hope to complete that review and work through their backlog of tasks soon
   1. There was discussion about the utility and appropriateness of regional awards

7. Rules and Routes Committee

   1. A discussion was held to determine if the board was supportive of a rules change to allow RBAs to run approved brevet routes starting at any intermediate control
   1. The board felt that this should be extended to include any point on the route, presuming it gets added as a timed start/end control, and also when the route is run in reverse
   1. There were some questions about the exact phrasing of this new rule to handle various edge cases when the route is not a complete loop, and Dave took an action item to discuss this with other rules committee members and come back to the board with a full proposal
   1. The topic of post-rides was discussed
   1. Post rides are allowed by ACP & LRM and would supplement pre-rides
   1. The intent is that these would be the exception and would require special approval for certain cases. Dave will work with Rules on a proposal for the board
   1. There was a brief discussion of how to count the post-riders for insurance purposes but it was agreed that there would be a workable solution

8. Dawn presented the marketing team report

   1. Dawn plans to review the post Philly Bike Expo survey responses and present a report to the board at a future meeting
   1. Dawn also to share a full report to the board by the May meeting on the survey distributed to membership in the fall of 2025 about membership feedback on expositions and community outreach

9. Dawn presented the March Between Controls

   1. Between Controls has a 76% open rate - click rate increased to 12%
   1. Dawn has received some nice emails from members about rando radio - and Dawn appreciates everyone’s help with it and this new idea instituted. Dawn will continue to do these panel interviews and has a goal of having 3-4 per year moving forward.

   1. Regional highlights

      1. Dawn Piech shared her thoughts on the four 2026 regional highlights to include Santa Cruz Randonneurs, Finger Lake Randonneurs, possibly Utah Randonneurs, and possibly Central Florida Randonneurs. She will follow up with both Utah and Central Florida Randonneurs. Dave mentioned that the Florida highlight could include the 3 regions. Dawn is open to this idea.
   1. The RUSA Instagram account is growing - it is now at 4k followers

10. UAF Aiglones Series

    1. Dave noted that he had forgotten to follow through on the prior request about adding the UAF Aiglones Series to the rides offered by RUSA
    1. There were some questions of whether we have the resources to support such rides, the interest from potential riders, and whether or not RBAs or potential organizers have the capability to determine whether young riders are suitable to ride such events safely
    1. It was also noted that this would indicate a departure from the existing RUSA offerings due to the shorter length
    1. This concern was somewhat assuaged by the fact that we are not developing it organically but instead merely adopting an existing program from UAF
    1. There was also some discussion about how much web support would be needed to record results, but people felt okay having a stop gap solution like google forms until it was clear there was sufficient interest in more events
    1. Dave will ask the original requesters for a more fleshed out proposal to vote on

11. Philly Bike Expo

    1. People who attended the bike expo enjoyed it
    1. There was lots of activity at the RUSA booth.

12. Noah presented his proposal for the graphics committee

    1. Noah requests approval to send out a survey to potential artists and designers for future commissioned work for RUSA
    1. Noah will send the board a draft survey for comment which will be sent out, based on the responses a full proposal will be brought to the board for an official vote
13. May 13th and June 10th are decided on for the next meetings
14. Meeting ended at 10:00pm Eastern