Randonneurs USA Board of Director Minutes

June 10th, 2026

1. Call to order: The meeting on June 10th, 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 May Board meeting were approved
3. A motion was carried to formally vote on a motion that was carried out over email. This motion allowed use of a route for the Seattle 600k that had an overnight closure on part of the route due to park hours and there were no reasonable alternative routes. The board approved it for this instance of the ride provided that it was well messaged to all participants. The Rules Committee will decide whether rules should be updated to allow for these sorts of routes and what will happen should Seattle decide to re-use this route.
4. The May financial report was presented by Dave Thompson. Of note were the cost of the Philadelphia Bike Expo which was slightly more than what was budgeted based on last year’s expenditure as well as liability insurance late invoicing.

5. Charlie Martin presented the Web Team report.

   1. John Lee Ellis has created an advertisers page on the RUSA site which can now be linked to. At the moment it will require manual updates, and there was some discussion given on whether or not to give certain admins partial website access to manage pages such as this.
   1. Jeff Loomis has restored the RBA Tools menu in the main navigation.
   1. May has been a quiet month but the web team expects more productivity in June
6. Dave Thompson reported on some issues with google drive access which he is working through.
7. Chris Argo gave the RBA Liaison report. He has been having many conversations with RBAs over the last few weeks and has been checking in on their brevet series. A number of RBAs have brought forward questions about routing and rules which shows promising engagement from RBAs on ensuring they are upholding RUSA's standards and regulations. Chris will continue to support the RBAs and check in with the remaining ones he hasn’t talked to soon.
8. Chris Argo presented a framework doc for a recurring RBA round table over email to the board and led a short discussion on it during the meeting. The board was supportive of having more touchpoints with RBAs and gave feedback about the frequency, topics, and timing of the roundtable.
9. Noah Swartz gave a short report on the Awards Committee - the majority of their recent focus has been on the Grand Randonee Award which will be discussed later in the meeting, after which they will turn their focus to the Rouleur award. Charlie offered to share some analysis he had done on the availability of Rouleur qualifying rides which Noah said he would share with the Awards Committee.
10. John Lee Ellis gave a report on the Rules Committee - reiterating that they would look into rules around routes with time constrained sections. The rules committee also is finalizing the rules for starting loop shaped brevet routes from intermediate locations. An open question remains about how to handle almost-loop routes, where the canonical start and end locations are nearby, but technically different. This decision will be deferred until an organizer inquires in the future.
11. Dawn Piech gave a report on Between controls. She continues to work with Ted Fay to update the new and revised layout and format of the newsletter. Dawn also gave an overview of segments that would appear in future issues, which include the Regional Highlights as well as Rando Radio
12. Dave Thompson gave an update on the upcoming RUSA elections. Although they are not until the end of the year Dave wanted to ensure that we have all of the necessary processes in place to facilitate the election. Dave confirmed that Tim Sullivan is happy to collect nominations for candidates again, as he did last year, and that Deb Banks would again interview candidates and publish videos. John Lee will work to keep the website up to date with candidate information. Tim will also handle American Randonneur Award nominations. Dawn also shared that there will be a highlight of the call for nominations in the July newsletter to allow people to begin to think about the upcoming nomination period and elections.
13. Dave Thompson gave an update on the Permanents Committee. The Permanents Committee welcomes Andrew LaMarche to assist with pre-reviewing submitted permanent routes before they go to final review.
14. Dave Thompson gave an update on Patches, Trinkets, and an upcoming Photo Contest. Paul Kramer has asked to run a photo contest for a photo that can be used as a cover of American Randonneur - as he takes over editing duties. Additional unchosen photos will be used to populate a RUSA wall calendar as well as used for social media outreach. A note will be added to Between Controls to spread the word about the photo contest. There was also some talk of ordering trinkets ahead of Paris-Brest-Paris 2027, and the board will look into the cost and production of such items.
15. Dave Thompson gave an update on plans for a Paris-Brest-Paris bag drop for PBP 2027. Deb Banks has expressed interest in running a bag drop again, as she did in 2023. Certain logistics will need to change due to the changes in the PBP route since 2023 as well as changes in club and non-profit status of the Gold Country Randonneurs. The board will discuss the implications of these and work with Deb as she develops her plan.
16. Noah Swartz presented the Grand Randonee Award report to the board over email and seeded the discussion during the board meeting. The board appreciated the report from the Awards Review Committee and found the supporting research to be very elucidating. The board voted to create a new, to be named award, that would celebrate the completion of a mixture of rides totaling 12000 kms. This was chosen over the initial proposal which was for an ultra (10x) 1200k award as it felt more flexible and gave incentive to certain rides that are considered difficult but otherwise do not have awards celebrating them. The board will pull the Awards Review Committee back in for polishing the remaining details of the award.
17. Noah Swartz led a discussion about what RUSA’s role could or should be in advising RBAs on support for multiday rides. The board discussed what avenues for feedback members have when events don’t live up to their expectations, what pre-planning can be done, and who would have valuable feedback in terms of how large events should be organized. Dawn also shared conversations with 3 members about their experiences at a RUSA 1200k. She expressed her opinion that there should be some type of feedback mechanism for members to give organizers and RUSA input and feedback on all 600k+ events. Ultimately the board recommended that this would be a good topic for a future RBA roundtable.
18. Dave Thompson mentioned that he will send a reminder to RBAs to submit 1200k proposals for the 2027 season.
19. The meeting adjourned at 10pm Eastern.