MINUTES OF A MEETING

OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

RANDONNEURS USA, INC.

Held: September 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 Doug McLerran as the new RBA of IL: Quad Cities.

A motion was made and passed to approve the FL: Northeast 1200 application.

Rob had provided the Board with a written report of his activities as RBA Liaison and Brevet Coordinator. Susan France will be handing off OR: Portland to Michael Powell Parich at the beginning of 2023 after 19 years of service. Only 7 regions have submitted events for 2023, which is significantly less than this time last year. The flèche export currently outputs data in a mangled order and should be updated to produce a format that ACP accepts. Outputting the date would also resolve some ambiguity of when a flèche ride actually started since there is a range of valid start times. The Board discussed the tentative 1200 km events for 2023 as well as discovery processes that would empower RBAs to coordinate their grand randonnéee dates and plan their regional calendars accordingly. Proposals included a shared spreadsheet of tentative grand randonnéee dates as well as RBAs notifying the RBA list with their intent to run a grand randonnéee on a given date. It would be up to RBAs to resolve any scheduling conflicts if they wish. The application form for 1200 km events could also link to the shared spreadsheet. The spreadsheet would only be used during the first two weeks of August for planning grand randonnéees, after which finalized dates would be announced so that all RBAs could start using that information to plan their calendars. Rob will write up a process and communicate it to the RBAs.

Dave shared August financial statements that he prepared and reviewed with Tim. The reports included the monthly Statement of Activity Year to Date Comparison report and Financial Position Comparison report, as well as a one-time Statement of Activity by Month report. A motion was made and passed to transfer the role of Treasurer from Dan to Tim.

The Board discussed the stipulation in the RUSA Constitution that the selected Treasurer must be a Director. Concerns included having continuity in the role from year to year, how to handle years when no Director was willing or capable of handling the role, spreading knowledge for performing the role, and ensuring oversight, accessibility, and accountability if the Treasurer was not on the Board. A motion was made and passed to amend the Constitution to not require the Treasurer to be a Director. In order for the amendment to become official there will need to be a vote by the membership, with at least 2/3 of the votes in favor of the change.

Charlie presented a written report prepared by John Lee Ellis on the activities of the Web Team. The permanents system has been experiencing SmartWaiver processing delays, causing issues with riders being unable to complete registration for a permanent. SmartWaiver claims to have resolved this, and there have been no subsequent issues. The Web Team has ideas on how to make the registration flow more robust to future SmartWaiver outages. Content is being enhanced for the Audax program, including a Q&A section for organizers, captains, and riders. Once calendars have been finalized, the brevet weeks and BRM 600 km events with 8000m elevation should be listed on the home page.

Dawn had provided a report on the August issue of Between Controls. The issue was sent to 3,698 members with a 67% open rate and a 20.8% click rate. The top 3 areas that received clicks were the awards survey results (29.9% with 372 clicks), the membership demographics link (20.7% with 258 clicks), and the store (10.9% with 136 clicks). The Board 2022 Strategic Goals received 39 clicks, the Board meeting minutes received 12 clicks, and the Mission/Vision received 9 clicks. Content for upcoming editions will include Coffeeneuring from Mary Gersema, membership renewal reminders, Board nominations, American Randonneur Award nominations, and election results. The September edition will be sent on September 15, 2022.

Tim had shared a discussion from Garrett Berkey regarding a payment proposal for producing a RUSA promotional video. Tim will follow up with a contract for the Board to review after making an initial pass. Tim will ask Garrett to join the December Board meeting to provide a short presentation on the project.

Dave proposed starting up a temporary committee for formulating what a volunteer award might look like. The committee would solicit input from RBAs and report back. The Board discussed initial ideas for how the award could be earned, either by a qualitative assessment made by RBAs, or some quantitative assessment to be defined later. Dave will reach out to some candidates for this committee to describe the initiative.

The Board discussed RUSA's 25th anniversary in August of 2023. RUSA spent several thousands of dollars on medals for riders who completed a 20th anniversary ride. The Board decided not to spend money on a trinket for the 25th anniversary. Alternative ideas included a cheaper trinket such as a patch, providing non-subsidized trinkets for purchase, or having an icon on member trophy cases for participation in the anniversary event. RUSA's birthday also overlaps when many members will be in France for PBP, so there was discussion of how to make the anniversary event more accessible and inclusive. July 22nd, 2023 will also be ACP's 400 km centenary celebration.

The Board discussed Article 6 of the Rules for Riders regarding what constitutes personal support. Dave Reached out to Jean-Gualbert to inquire about ACP's views on this. ACP's primary focus is on car support, and incidental/accidental ride-alongs aren't a concern, nor riders on different event lengths riding with one another. Apart from support, RUSA must also consider insurance implications in determining whether to allow riding with people who are not on the same event. Dave sent the ACP correspondence to the Rules Committee to discuss further.

The Board briefly discussed what a climbing award might look like. It could tentatively be modeled after the gravel changes that were introduced this year. Additional work needs to be done to determine what infrastructure is needed to support this, and what the parameters of the award should be.

There will be no October meeting due to scheduling difficulties. The Board will continue its operations via email and reconvene in November. The next scheduled meeting is on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. The meeting concluded at 19:04 PDT