February 10, 2022 Board Meeting

MINUTES OF A MEETING

OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

RANDONNEURS USA, INC.

 

Held: February 10, 2022

A meeting of the RUSA Board of Directors was convened by Zoom/ telephone conference and called to order by the President at 17:05 PST.

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 January 12, 2022

The Board approved an e-vote amending the starting location for the Rules for Permanents

Dan had circulated financial reports consisting of a Statement of Activity YTD Comparison and a Statement of Financial Position Comparison that were reviewed.

Rob reported on his activities as the RBA Liaison. He has begun collecting data on whether regions or clubs are incorporated by contacting RBAs individually and in the process has been correcting some contact information. He will know in a few months if this is something that RUSA can offer national support to those RBAs who would like to incorporate. A Zoom meeting was held with RBAs to introduce the new gravel program and discuss EPP and a video of the presentation has been posted. Gardner Duvall has announced that he will be stepping down as the RBA for D.C. Randonneurs at the end of the year and a replacement has been identified by the region’s host club who will submit an application to RUSA.

Charlie Martin presented a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. The Web Team plans to have full results processing for the Audax events implemented by May. With the gravel program the team has discussed adding the extra time for RUSA events in the calculator. Also the team is considering whether RBAs should be allowed to advertise an event’s estimated amount of unpaved distance before assigning a route and what to do if the assigned route’s unpaved distance changes before the results are submitted. Lois Springsteen has added indexes to the recent American Randonneur online editions. Lynne Fitzsimmons advised Man-Fai on her Excel-centric process for generating awards listings for American Randonneur. The team hopes to automate some of the lists. Charlie fixed a bug where perm results submissions were not getting properly deduped.  

Dawn had provided reports on the January issue of Between Controls.  The issue was sent to 3673 members with an excellent 70% open rate and a 17.3% click rate. The call for members to submit photos was positive. Dawn is looking to add volunteers who will review each edition for grammar, spelling, flow, etc. Dawn with Dan and Dave are working on the advertiser’s link and letting advertisers know when they are being listed. Dawn provided a written report that highlighted her other work for Between Controls.

Dawn also shared a summary of a Zoom call in January with Dave, John Ende, and Ben Everett for the transition of the RUSA Instagram account from John Ende to Ben Everett. Ben will be the moderator of the RUSA Instagram account and Dawn will be added as a moderator for the RUSA Facebook group. Dawn mentioned several virtual free Constant Contact seminars she will be attending to continue to streamline and improve Between Controls. Dawn then gave a brief update on the drafted mission statement and values and she will be working with member George Swain to finalize the statement to present to the Board.

Next was a discussion regarding Janice Chernekoff’s announcement that she is resigning as the editor of American Randonneur at the end of the year and how we locate her replacement. She will be contacted to obtain a list of the qualifications necessary to be the editor. There was then discussion on how to advertise the opening to obtain a replacement.

Dave presented a written summary of the RUSA goals that the Board had circulated amongst the members. The summary listed 6 main topics each with subtopics with Board members assigned to the subtopics based on the goals that they had submitted. There were several discussions of some of the subtopics. At the conclusion of the discussion Dave assigned the following 6 topics to be headed by Board members:

Marketing/Increasing membership – Dan

Financial – Dan

RBAs – Rob

Web – Charlie

Communications – Dawn/Charlie

Internal – Dave

The Board member will send emails on how to implement the goals in the next few weeks so that these goals can be discussed at the March Board meeting.

One of the goals is to set up a Google Group for RUSA with guidelines with a moderator for content that will not be restricted to just RUSA members. Charlie will proceed with writing up guidelines for the Board to review and once approved will start the Google Group.

Dan requested that icons for domestic 1200ks completed by a member be posted on the member’s results page. Charlie will proceed with implementing this proposal.

Dan will work on a notice to be sent out next week to those members who let their membership lapse in 2022.

Dan has been working with several clothing manufacturers to produce cycling clothing for RUSA and regions.

The meeting was adjourned at 19:13 PST.