MINUTES OF A MEETING

OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

RANDONNEURS USA, INC.

Held: December 14, 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

Also attending were incoming Board members Bill Bryant and Gardner Duvall. Garrett Berkey of Mercator Films was also present at the beginning of the meeting.

Bill Bryant and Gardner Duvall who were recently elected to serve a 3 year term starting in January were welcomed to the Board.

Garrett Berkey of Mercator Films presented his plans for RUSA's promo films. There would be a 3-minute full-length video that could be split into five 30-second advertisements covering one topic each. There would also be a 15-second teaser advertisement. The topics would include: endurance riding without racing, endurance riding with camaraderie, endurance riding exploring new areas, endurance riding while earning rewards, and testing your endurance with 1200 km adventures. The 15-second teaser could be ready by the end of May, and the full video could be ready in early July. There was discussion of how the videos could have a broader appeal and showcase diverse riders. A motion was made and passed to sign a contract with Mercator Films.

Minutes for September and November are still in progress and should be prepared by the end of the month.

Tim, as Treasurer, provided the Board with monthly Statement of Activity YTD Comparison and Financial Position Comparison reports for November.

Rob had shared a written report on his activities as RBA liaison and brevet coordinator. The transition for IA: Central from Greg Courtney to Greg Smith should now be complete. The transition for MD: Capital Region will be complete at the end of the month. Some RBAs are not on the RBA email list or have digest settings that prevent receiving announcements in a timely manner, which may result in problems for their region and membership. Rob will set an expectation that RBAs subscribe to the email distribution list with settings to receive each email. Rob is collecting RBA applications and related documents that were missing from RUSA's document library. Finally, the Board revisited the deadline for calendaring ACP events. Rob will ask John Lee to update the website documentation to list the deadline as one week after Labor Day.

Charlie had shared a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. The dynamic results filtering feature has launched. The RUSA site now handles Challenge Lepertel applications, and will be followed with award listing functionality. All applications have been submitted and approved for everyone the Board is aware of, and an announcement will go into the January Between Controls to catch potential members that may have been missed. The website now handles ACP events in November and December, including calendaring validation and most ACP SR calculations. There is some remaining work for annual ACP points calculations and an ACP SR calculation edge case. There is now better support for Lynne to prepare American Randonneur awards listings. RUSA has obtained a RideWIthGPS API key for anticipated use in upcoming projects. Audax and SR600 medals are now available in the RUSA store. The team is working on support for several new Ultra awards. The team is looking at several enhancements to results import/export for both UAF and ACP events. John Lee is reaching out to RBAs to collect missing route assignments for several events in the past few years. The team is auditing the website to replace "Chairman" verbiage to "Chair." Ride fee integration has been removed for post-2022 events. Several admin enhancements were made for managing events, brevet routes, permanents, and awards.

Dawn had provided a report on the November issue of Between Controls. The issue was sent to 3,854 members with a 70.3% open rate and a 13.6% click rate. The top 3 areas that received clicks were the RUSA neck gaiter link (26.8% with 200 clicks), the 2023 perms program fees info (14% with 104 clicks), and the info for ACP events extending past October 15th through December 31st (11.9% with 89 clicks). The Board 2022 Strategic Goals received 9 clicks and the Board meeting minutes received 5 clicks. Upcoming editions will include PBP resources from John Lee and Wei Sun, 1200 km event photos, the RUSA website, and International Women's Day. The December edition will be sent on December 15, 2022.

There are several committee updates. Dawn is transitioning the Incident Liaison role to Misha Heller in January. She created a 5-page document with process protocols and sent it to Dave to finalize before sharing with the Board. Dan will replace Jay Fichialos for handling American Randonneur magazine print ads. He is currently working with 3 advertisers. Chris Argo will be joining the Brevet Coordinator Committee. Gardner is joining the Insurance Committee. Dave will become Chair of the Permanents Committee so that he can advise on technical issues and receive most of the incoming questions.

A motion was made and passed to approve Ultra versions of the following awards: American Randonneur Challenge, Coast to Coast, Can-Am Challenge, Mondial, and Rouleur.

The Board discussed a proposal from the Gravel Committee to award gravel credit for permanents. There were concerns about how to address the possibility of free-routing. Dave will ask the Permanents Committee about finding a volunteer who can specialize in gravel routes, and will also look into the possibility of adding controls that constrain the gravel distance. A motion was made and passed to incorporate permanents into the gravel program. Details will be worked out later.

Dave had shared a written summary of recent discussions of the IL: Chicago region. The Board discussed Chicago's projected events schedule for 2023 and the possibility of adding additional RUSA events to the current offering. Michele is interested in running rides out of suburban Chicago due to hotel affordability.

The RUSA membership voted in favor of the constitutional amendment to allow the Treasurer to be selected from outside the Board. Dave will draft a proposal for how to proceed with the Treasurer election.

The next scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. The meeting concluded at 19:03 PDT