Board Meeting – August 11, 2014

MORE Board:

Ernie Rodriguez
Jason Ashmore
Kevin Adams
Dave Magill
Jason Miller
Martin Fernandez
Melanie Nystrom (Call in)

MORE Volunteers
Christina Higgis
Rob Lowe

Dave Magill: Motions for the acquisition to acquire the Cranky Monkey (CM) series from EX2 Adventures:

Board approved the acquisition of the CM series, & sold to SCORE. Board resolution authorizes MORE president to negotiate the events proceeds agreement with SCORE, manager of the CM Series.

FINANCIALS – Kevin Adams:

• Patapsco Epic success!
• $8200 cash flow beginning of August
• DNO insurance renewed with Sandy Spring Bank;
• Funding for lake fairfax paid; ironwood outdoors payment obtained funds from the cap cross donations to pay this balance;
• Invoiced by Trail Conservatory; invoice with SHA-SFF will move 25k to MORE; 95k coming from trail conservatory – SHA, in the end.

ADVOCACY – Dave Magill

• Want to move on maintenance plan – smaller projects, i.e. vegetation management, mud puddle management, etc. Items individuals can do on their own time – how do we do this? Options:
  1. Formal adopt a trail program
  2. Establish deputy liaison program
  3. Put together a crew. Liaisons take the responsibility to coordinate with parks management, crew members, sign waivers – basically to do what they see needs to be done and take the responsibility to do the job – maintenance only, no re-routing or new building.
• Want to roll maintenance plan, publicize it, & move on it ASAP. MORE has over 5k for tools. Jason M. will create signs and go to park management & ask about the signs.
• MORE Board concurs that Dave Magill should move out on maintenance plan and get it established.
• The MORE fall trail work flyers need to be designed. Julie Guy will make the tool order.

Partnership MORE is looking for a volunteer to work with the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA), MORE agrees that Ernie Rodriguez will be accountable

COMMUNICATIONS – Website/Forums/Xchange – Martin Fernandez & Jason Ashmore

• Website – cleaning it up – new build in progress; Make it simple, actionable; value added for sponsors. Focus on Events, Volunteering and Joining
• No 3rd party events from non sponsors allowed on calendar. Every ride does NOT NEED to be sponsored.
• Venues are going to be part of the calendar, with maps.
• sMOREs are going to be rolled into the new site.
• Consolidate web presences into one place
• Biggest hurdle: migrating “forums” over 11k users but only under 500 active…
• Sharepoint & microsoft exchange is up!

Member survey & strategy: Advice from member Joel Kennet: Joel states: in a nutshell, member survey, need to evaluate sources and data carefully. don’t overestimate the ability to get valuable data. Perhaps focus groups. He’s going to provide us with valuable opinions on how to shape the survey.

Volunteer recruitment:

• Trouble recruiting positions; how to get excited about volunteering!!!
• We need to get back to the basics – riding, local events, maintenance – getting back to the roots;
• Key concept, what will it be??? what will be the theme of next year be?? “Getting back to the Basics?”

Overall discussion – its not that we “can’t” find volunteers, but rather we can’t find people willing to fill management roles; we need someone to manage the work – “it IS work”

We need to figure out how to generate more “ownership” in the club; We will re-engage in September, after the IMBA summit.

Life-time members: 12 or so; Jason Ashmore will confirm number; Jason Miller makes a motion: move to honor lifetime members for both MORE and IMBA membership. Motion passed. Kevin Adams will initiate process to make all memberships start and end at same time..

Conflicts of interest: The board discussed the possibility of an IMBA employee serving on the MORE board. After discussing, the board determined that the current Club Rules Conflict of Interest policy applies as the dues revenue split contained in the Chapter Charter Agreement creates a contractual financial interest with MORE that precludes the IMBA employee from serving on the board unless the board votes in favor of an exemption in accordance with the Club Rules.

Patapsco Epic Observations:

• A success!!!
• Over 200 people finished, and generally riders loved it!!!
• Ran out of vegetarian options – make sure this does not happen at MoCo and future events.
• Important that we make an effort to publicly recognize those that worked on the trails, amazing riding.