March 10, 2021 Board Minutes

MINUTES OF A MEETING

OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

RANDONNEURS USA, INC.

 

Held: March 10, 2021

 

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:

• Debra Banks

• Dan Driscoll

• John Lee Ellis

• Rob Hawks

• Dawn Piech

• Tim Sullivan

• Dave Thompson

A motion was made and passed ratifying the following e-votes made since the last Board meeting: approval of Chris Argo as the RBA for the Alabama region in 2022, renewing the RUSA trademark, and approving the Mason Dixon 1200 km in 2022.

A motion was made and passed to approve the meeting minutes for February 10, 2021

Dan had circulated financial reports consisting of a Statement of Activity YTD Comparison, Statement of Financial Position Comparison, and a 2021 Budget vs. Actual that were reviewed.

Tim reported that our attorneys are still in discussion with other counsel and are trying to schedule another mediation.

Dawn gave a brief report on the International Women’s Day that took place the past weekend, including the regions who participated with events..

John Lee provided an update on the activities of the web team. This included fine tuning the permanents program, continued work on coordinating the development, test, and production environments on the website, and programming and configuring the Drupal environment used by parts of the website.

Dave had prepared a summary of the approved organizational goals for 2021. Rob will send the goals to the RBAs in conjunction with the summary of RBAs goals for their information and comments. The organizational goals will be posted on the website.

Revision of the Election Process on the Bylaws was the next item. Two proposals had been circulated to amend the process. The second of the two proposals was agreed to by the Board. Since a Bylaw change must be presented over two Board meetings, the proposal will be voted on for final approval at the next Board meeting.

Discussion was held on the goal of increasing membership. John Lee had prepared a series of charts showing annual membership numbers, the numbers of members who had joined in a specific year, the amount of one year members, members by expiration year, average length of memberships, annual active members, average rides per year for active members, and various award charts depicting annual P-12, R-12, K-Hound and American Randonneur Challenge awards. Further analysis and a survey may be necessary to determine why we are not retaining more members. It was suggested to send the charts to RBAs for their comments and asking how the RBAs are able to attract new members. It was suggested that we create articles about randonneuring for publications.

Dave had circulated information on Audax events that had been put together by Central Florida RBA Paul Rozelle. Various aspects of what would be necessary to implement and Audax program was discussed.  The Board will hold a special meeting on March 23, 2021 for a presentation on Audax rides and to discuss whether RUSA should proceed with Audax events sanctioned by UAF.

Deb spoke briefly on progress on sanctioning gravel events and working with various members on holding gravel rides.

The meeting was adjourned at 20:01 PST