RUSA Board Meeting Highlights, April 6, 2016

Attendees:  Debra Banks (b), John Lee Ellis(b),  Lynne Fitzsimmons(b),  Rob Hawks(b),  Spencer Klaassen(b),  Susan Otcenas(b),  Mark Thomas (b), Jennifer Wise (RUSA Store)

1 Prior meeting minutes approval

  • Passed

2 January meeting highlights approval

  • Passed

3 Confirm appointment of Susan Otcenas as Insurance Committee Chair

  • Passed

4 Confirm appointment of John Lee Ellis as Website Committee Chair

  • Passed

5 Mondial and Galaxy Awards

In March, the Board voted to charge for costs and shipping for the Mondial and Galaxy awards, based on the treasurer’s projection of the number of riders approaching the 40,000km mark.  Historically, this was thought to be a “luminary” award that only a few riders would achieve.  In the ensuing years, many more riders than anticipated accumulated that amount of distance and the number is projected to get larger as time progresses.  These awards will be a major cost item.  The projection is that the cost in 2016 will be approximately $4000.

After investigation of alternate awards, it was decided to keep the existing Mondial award, and investigate a less-costly, yet equally nice Galaxy award.  The charge for both awards would be $100.

Recognition of achievement will still be automatic, no application required.

6 RUSA Logo

The Board addressed the question of updating the RUSA logo.  The original logo was based on the Olympic cycling logo. Comments on the impetus to update the logo included:

  • Design is outdated
  • Membership is changing, website is changing
  • Riders won’t purchase a jersey with the current logo
  • A racing bike; doesn’t really communicate randonneuring

A discussion was held on how to solicit new logo designs.  It was suggested that we recruit graphic designers from within our membership and have them work with a small team of board members.

One parameter was that someone should be able to look at the logo and know we are from the USA.  We won’t change the logo until we have something we want.

The decision was to create a small panel of 2-3 board members to work with a small group of graphic designers to bring a few candidate designs back to the board.  After much discussion, Deb Banks and Jennifer Wise will be on the panel representing the board.

7 RUSA Store, Clothing and Reflective Gear

Mark has the RUSA Store clothing and reflective gear inventory in his garage,  because the board committed to Jennifer to offload that part of the RUSA Store from her basement.  He’s filling items for existing stock, but not ordering new stock.  He says not a long-term solution to this problem.  He also said we need to transition the clothing to outside vendor fulfillment.

Susan noted that the ultimate goal was that we wouldn’t have this (clothing) any more.  We were going to limit the clothing we offer and it was going to be done by vendors.  We need someone to be the coordinator for the vendor management, but we need the new logo first.

Deb offered to take the store inventory off Mark’s plate and out of his garage.

8 RUSA Future

Deferred to email.

9 RBA Access to new member email addresses

RBAs want to reach out to new members, invite them to populaires, and so on.  Would it be possible during the membership signup for the new member to check “share email with the RBA”?

John Lee noted that we do want to have outreach; Mark wondered if we had overthought our privacy policy, as an RBA is a RUSA official.

Spencer gets a couple of requests every time the AmR arrives, and he’d like to help the RBAs welcome the new members to our family.

Mark asked if we needed a technical solution, or have Spencer provide the emails on request from an RBA.

Lynne will ask Dan Diehn about allowing a RUSA official to provide the info upon request for RUSA business.

10 Next Meeting

May 4, 2016, 5:00PM, PDT.