MINUTES OF A MEETING
OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
RANDONNEURS USA, INC.
Held: June 14, 2022
A meeting of the RUSA Board of Directors was convened by Zoom / telephone conference and called to order by the President at 17:05 PDT.
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 May 11, 2022.
Dan, as Treasurer, provided the Board with a monthly Statement of Activity Year to Date Comparison Report, a Financial Position Comparison Report, and current account balances. Additionally, Dan reported on non-linear income and expenses that affected monthly balances.
Rob reported on his activities as RBA liaison. The Board discussed Hamid's application to start a new region in northeastern Florida. There was some discussion of the trajectory of the Gainesville region and the possible effect of a new region 60 miles away. A motion was made and passed to accept Hamid's application to start a new region and be a dual RBA for Northern Virginia and Northeastern Florida. Rob and Dave have continued their efforts to get event results filed in a timely manner for insurance reporting. This continues to be a pain point, with canceled or no-participant events accounting for about half of the unsubmitted results. An automated website reminder would be helpful for addressing the remaining half.
Charlie presented a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. Implementation progress will be slower for a while due to the overlap with prime rando season. Some website content is missing for Audax and gravel, and the gravel implementation may silently roll out rather than waiting on that. Audax functionality will not be ready in time for other events that are imminent, so these will need to be handled manually for a while longer. The Web Team will prioritize results submission reminders to RBAs since it is causing significant admin headache. There was also some discussion of 2022 changes to the R-10000 application. Charlie recently heard of a possible limitation of importing 600 km routes into OpenRunner free accounts which could become a pain point for SR600 administrators and RBAs wanting to check for 600 km routes that meet ACP's 8000 m elevation threshold. Dave will investigate further.
Charlie discussed the workflow for calendaring and configuring grand randonnées, and various functionality that depends on this configuration. There is some coordination required from RBAs and the Brevet Coordinator to set up each domestic grand randonnée, and the Web Team is needed as well for each brand new domestic grand randonnée. Charlie and Rob discussed updates to the current process. Charlie will document the necessary process changes. Dan suggested that these updates be added to the 1,200 km guidelines already on the RUSA website.
Dawn had provided reports on the May issue of Between Controls. The issue was sent to 3,480 members with a 68% open rate and a 10% click rate. The top 3 areas that received clicks were the store (17.3% with 77 clicks), the Road Bike Rider safety article (15.1% with 67 clicks), and the 1200k event spreadsheet (13.1% with 58 clicks). The Board 2022 Strategic Goals received 16 clicks and the Board meeting minutes received 9 clicks. The June edition will be sent on June 15, 2022 and will include RUSA's updated mission statement, values, and organizational objectives.
Dawn also reported on her activities as Incident Liaison, detailing the number of incidents this year in comparison with previous years. Charlie suggested exporting the old incident reports in the back office to consolidate them all into one spot. Dawn will follow up with details on the incident reporting process.
The Board discussed the death of a rider at an event in Virginia. There will be a memorial service on June 19.
Dave had consolidated the Member Values and Responsibilities work into Dawn's updated Mission Statement and Values and circulated the result for discussion and possible adoption. There was some iteration on the final wording. A motion was made and passed to approve the updated wording as written.
Tim has been in contact with Garrett Berkey regarding the production of promotional RUSA videos. The tentative plan is to create a series of short videos covering a variety of aspects of RUSA and randonneuring. There was some discussion about the ROI on these videos and how they will eventually be circulated. A motion was made and passed to provide Tim with a $2,500 working budget for this project, and to keep the Board posted. Tim will follow up with a summary of the plan and will seek out a firm quote.
Dawn had sent out an awards survey to RUSA members which was further publicized on the RUSA Facebook page, to regional lists via some RBAs, and to the RUSA Google Group. Charlie had provided a collated view of the responses. The survey initially went out to 3,478 members via Between Controls on May 19 and had 616 responses as of June 12. Members responded favorably overall to awards and the awards program, and many members expressed appreciation for soliciting this feedback. Many written comments were favorable towards a volunteering-based award. The Board discussed what a volunteering award might look like and how it could be made objective or standardized without removing some of the uniqueness inherent to different regions. The Board will continue reviewing the data and written responses.
The Board discussed next steps for discussion on the Board Covenant.
Dave discussed goals for the July Board meeting, which will be on Wednesday, July 13, 2022. The July meeting typically includes a review of new awards proposals and new grand randonnées. The meeting concluded at 19:02 PDT.