MINUTES OF A MEETING
OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
RANDONNEURS USA, INC.
Held: October 13, 2021
A meeting of the RUSA Board of Directors was convened by Zoom/ telephone conference and called to order by the President at 17:00 PDT.
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 to approve the meeting minutes for September 20, 2021.
Dan had circulated financial reports consisting of a Statement of Activity YTD Comparison and a Statement of Financial Position Comparison that were reviewed.
The Board then discussed the 2022 budget. One of the topics was whether or not any fees can be decreased or if they should be maintained in order to ensure that RUSA has sufficient reserves for unexpected expenses. After discussion the majority voted to maintain the present fee structure and to review the fees next year.
Rob reported on his actions as the RBA Liaison. He held another virtual onboarding meeting with new RBAs and with Greg Smith, chair of the Routes Committee. They discussed routes submission, keeping routes up to date and other route related issues. Rob is considering hosting a voluntary virtual session with all RBAs where ideas can be exchanged. Rob announced 2 RBAs may be stepping down at the end of 2022. Deb reminded the Board of the value of conducting an exit interview with an RBA who is resigning to discuss why they are resigning and other issues. John Lee may have the Web Team look at the turnover rate of RBAs and the length of time served so we have data on whether turnover is a problem.
Rob then presented the 2022 ACP calendar of events that was reviewed by the Board. He will make an inquiry of one region’s schedule and then forward the calendar to Roland Bevan for submission to the ACP and Les Randonneurs Mondiaux (for grand randonnées) by October 15, 2021.
John Lee provided a written report on the activities of the Web Team. The report included the creation of additional trophy icons for the trophy case on the members results page, the RUSA Rouleur award and Can-Am pages are fully launched, the team fixed a bug when new member signed up and a cryptic error would appear when adding a new club, added validation to prevent deleting award types, made progress toward importing a member’s foreign 1200k results, working on results for team events by adding event names and destination locales to make it easier to compile results spreadsheets sent to the ACP, and incorporated Bill Beck’s information on Super Randonnées so it is now an option under Permanents.
There was then discussion on appointing an independent person to review Bugzilla requests to make sure that someone timely responds to the requests.
Dave then asked the status of the Web Team implementing a process for a one-time short membership and John Lee will report back to the Board on the status of that work.
The next topic was providing a new member with a selection of RBAs to contact the member when the member joins RUSA. The Web Team has thought of providing the member with contact information for regions in the member’s area and then the member can contact the RBA. Rob proposed that instead once a member selects a region or regions that, if the member so chooses, the RBA would then be provided with the member’s contact information so the RBA can contact the member. It was then suggested that both options be utilized.
Dawn had provided the Board with a preview of the 5th edition of Between Controls e-newsletter which she has ready to send out to members as early as October 14th. Several suggestions were made to the edition and she will have the Board review again before sending to the membership. The September edition was sent out to 3174 members and was opened by 55% of the recipients, with a click rate of 11%. A special election issue was sent to 3106 member on October 1, 2021 with a 51% open rate and a 2% click rate.
Deb reported that the gravel committee comprised of Dawn, Rob, John Lee, Greg Smith, Rob Welsh and herself had met twice. The committee believes that gravel events should have their own program. There is agreement that RUSA gravel events should have extra time based on the percentage of gravel and perhaps the type of gravel. The committee is working on a formula to determine the amount of extra time to be allowed.
The next topic was marketing for RUSA to attract new members. Dan believes that RUSA needs to do some advertising. Perhaps in other publications or websites that have a common interest with RUSA. There was discussion that we need a volunteer who can spend the time necessary to formulate and implement a plan. Dawn will place a notice in Between Controls asking for a volunteer.
The meeting was adjourned at 19:18 PDT