Randonneurs USA Board of Director Minutes

June 18, 2025

1. Call to order: The meeting on June 18, 2025 was called to order at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, over Zoom. The following members were present.
   1. Bill Bryant
   2. Charlie Martin
   3. Chris Argo
   4. Gardner Duvall
   5. Dave Thompson
   6. John Lee Ellis
      
      Dawn Piech had an excused absence.

2. The minutes of the May 2025 Board meeting were approved.

3. The Treasurer submitted a written report for May.

4. Gardner reported that the Financial Audit Committee received the May Treasurer’s Report before the Board meeting, and had a brief discussion of one aspect of it.

5. Chris made the RBA-L report. He reported on a RBA roundtable he conducted in May over Zoom. The Board briefly discussed the merits of marketing efforts by RUSA, and by RBAs with RUSA support. Chris also noted that an Alabama rider had recently completed a 4,200 mile ride in three weeks.

6. The Web Team submitted a written report. Charlie orally reported that RBAs now have a tool to assign delegates for calendars and results. A reworked tool for assigning routes to events is launching June 19. The Team is working to add authentication/authorization to streamline the region and event selection workflows. They are also working with Membership to allow renewals without requiring authentication. A web scraper from China has caused various defensive actions by RUSA. The Team is exploring requiring Bugzilla logins to decrease resource utilization from web scrapers. They are also considering methods for RBAs to configure social media page links on their Regions page. The demographics report on RUSA membership will now be updated on the 1^st and 15^th day of each month, and on December 31. This enhances member privacy by not allowing instantaneous demographic updates to be directly correlated to new members.

7. There was continued discussion about the Board’s plans and timeline for communicating with members its decisions concerning:

• Self-identification options for RUSA members: Man/Woman/Non-Binary/Decline to State;
• The decision about whether to allow the display of gender with award designations;
• Aggregating gender data for demographic analysis and methods to preserve member privacy in the process; and,
• Engaging the member-composed consultation group to review and comment on the communication before public release.

This included an extended discussion about RUSA’s privacy policy and how it will drive implementation of updated gender policies.

8. Gardner provided an informal report of the Awards Review Committee about the possibility of using rider achievement recognitions as an adjunct to RUSA awards. The Board tasked the Awards Review Committee with proposing criteria for systematic recognitions. The Board will consider where these recognitions, as well as one-off recognitions of riders’ achievements, would be published.
    
9. The Board discussed the adoption of an Award Philosophy, for the purpose of aligning the work of the Awards Review Committee and proponents of new awards with principles the Board will apply in reviewing proposed awards. The drivers of this consideration are that these questions come up regularly; the process will be effective and streamlined if a philosophy guides the consideration of new awards; and, to minimize fluctuations in the awards consideration process between Boards with different membership over time. The Board asked the Awards Review Committee to report its thoughts in response to the questions of what is the purpose of awards, and what considerations should be applied in the review of proposed new awards.
    
10. The Board discussed the possibility of obtaining an AI-generated meeting summary, for the reference of the Board members.

11. The next meeting had been scheduled for July 9, 2025, and a meeting was set for August 11, 2025.

12. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 9:59 Eastern time, without objection.