July 2024 Board of Directors Meeting Minutes and Activity Reports

Virtually present at meeting

Casey Anderson – President

Jali Fernando – Executive Secretary

David Beugelmans - Secretary

Kathy Mihm – Ride Programs Director

Dave Magill - MD Advocacy Director

Rob Lowe – Membership Director

Neil Blake – Treasurer

Michael Ullmann – VA Advocacy Director

Guest: Rick Dotson

• Special Guest: Rick Dotson
  • Ride at Wakefield and doing government affairs in VA
  • Park authority request for $2 million to congressman’s office. Reached out and have been invited to attend a meeting. Met with aid 3 or 4 weeks ago. Think we have a good ally.
  • This money would go to tying the pump track by Wakefield into the Cross County Trail and intersections on some of the roads
  • Park authority representatives sent a note to Casey and asked MORE to support funding.
  • Sit on board of directors with Fairfax Water and talked to manager about reconsidering vote to not allow trail that goes through property. Water authority has proffer to allow trail to go through, as long as properties needed give easements. Understanding is that it would be a natural surface trail.
  • Casey: County would like to pave CCT from end to end, but that probably won’t happen. For this segment, likely would be unpaved.
  • Third thing that we are working is something that Ernie brought up in the winter. The group is Our Virginia Outdoors, which is lobbying in Richmond, and is a coalition of different outdoor organizations in VA.
    • There is a small amount of money available for trails and they have found trails to be engines of economic development. Trying to package up some of the trail work on the CCT and go to Richmond and get funding. Money so far hasn’t been put into trails in Northern VA.
    • Putting together a district wide plan for trails and interconnectivity.
  • Executive Director Report (Jali)
    • MoCo Epic
      • Taking up significant time.
      • In good shape. Only short of one aid station sponsor. Always could use more event sponsors.
      • Have open potential adaptive sponsor.
      • Need additional local businesses that may want to sponsor.
      • Glad we are selling memberships again through BikeReg, because 6 in the last month, and 5 were new members.
    • County Public Schools
      • Trying to get county public schools to recognize MORE for public service hours. Montgomery County and Anne Arundel County are currently included in Maryland. In VA, have Fairfax and Arlington.
    • A lot of weekend events coming up, including MORE summer picnic.
    • Also trying to do QR codes for membership to make it really easy.
    • Dave M
      • In activity report, commented on attending Filipino event in Gaithersburg
      • Jali: They have five different clubs, and they decided to get together for an event, for organization in the Philippines. Invited Jali to event and asked for swag to raffle up, so brought stuff. Event went very well. Most of them aren’t members but have been mountain biking for a very long time. Interested in getting groups out in the fall to do trail work.
      • Dave M: Know there has been a strong community in MoCo and would love to recruit a co-liaison from community for Schaefer.
        • Jali: Will reach out.
        • Neil: Is there a way to create an affiliation to bring their groups under the umbrella of MORE?
        • Casey: This is an important topic and ties into other issues related to membership. We should consider all of the membership issues at next month’s BOD meeting.
        •  Agreement to discuss at next meeting
      • MICL membership profit sharing (Jali)
        • Meeting with Jon tomorrow.
        • Recapping what we’ve talked about: What I would like to propose to him is that any money that comes from MORE is for programming, so it will not go directly to race director salary. They have currently in the low 500s for the number of student athletes, so about 100 graduating seniors next year. Plan is to buy all of their seniors a MORE membership, and went straight to IMBA for a discount: $20 per student athlete. Want to propose that MORE is willing to give $1000 per year for next 3 years, and the difference will be through member profit sharing. The 100 members at $8 each will not cover it, so want families to sign up separately though MICL through a code, and then we just need to figure out how to categorize them.
        • Casey:
          • Just to back up on some of the context, the way that this was presented to us was this was two separately things: MICL will buy MORE members for graduating seniors and then how to fund part of race director salary.
          • My reaction to this was trying to make sure that we were staying consistent with our mission. We ride bikes and build trails. We don’t sponsor racing. It’s not what we do.
          • Wanted to find way to fund MICL, but not writing a check for the race director. But if we could figure out a way to drive membership and cut MICL in on that, and preserve the principles.
          • Not as excited about high school seniors, more interested in getting the families into it.
          • This is a way to give a pathway to MICL, and be helpful, while being consistent with our priorities and aligning benefits between both organizations.
        • Jali:
          • MICL would pay for membership for all graduating seniors. Money is then coming to us. MORE’s cut of the membership per member would be $8.
        • Neil
          • We need to be more definitive. If it’s going to be a revenue share, we should agree to a percentage.
          • Believes the $12 cut for IMBA is too high and should be reduced. Neil thinks no more than 50% should be shared, which gives a big incentive for family memberships.
        • Casey
          • This gets very confusing. The way I look at it, this is basically a member acquisition cost. It’s more about MORE wanting some members and is willing to give up some revenue in the initial year to be able to do that.
        • David B
          • MICL should increase fees by $20 and sign up each student as a member.
        • Dave M
          • Comfortable giving $1000/year to MICL. It’s just a question to do regarding profit sharing above that.
          • Would be supportive of $1000/year and a profit-sharing deal that involves families and get kids sign up earlier.
        •  General agreement to let Jali work this out with Jon.
  • Financial Update (Neil)
    • -0.7k net general decrease

      • $10.1k General Revenues
      • $5.8k Memberships
      • $1.5k interest income
      • $1.4k MoCo Epic sponsorships
      • $0.7k general donations
      • $0.6 Other
    • $10.8 General Expenses

      • $6.5k ED cost
      • $3.5k MoCo Epic (Key Sanitation)
      • $0.7k Other
    • -18.5k Net Restricted Decrease

      • 3k Restricted Revenues (Hashawha)
    • $18.8k Restricted Expenses

      • $16.8k Frederick Watershed (Greenstone Trailcraft)
      • $1k Wakefield (Lumber from Cathy Reidel)
      • $0.7k Hashawha
      • $0.3k Other
    • Dave M

      • Our management of expenses seems to be strong and general donations are good, so the issue really seems to be the 10% drop in membership.
    • Neil
      • General donations generally come in towards the end of the year, which is a push from individual donors. It’s not a huge part, but it gave us the extra bit of cash. We need to see where it ends up.
      • REI has contributed a fair amount of money in previous years. Is this going to happen this year?

        • Jali: They said last year they didn’t have the budget. Reached out to them about the MoCo Epic this year and has not heard back.
  • Membership Update (Rob)
    • Slow month on memberships, we were down about $800 from 2023 and a bit more compared to 2022.
    • Post fee, in the same quarter last year we are almost $3K behind but for 2022, we are only about $130 behind.
    • New memberships level again shows part of the issue.
    • Statistics (June)

      • Transactions
        • 2024: 192
        • 2023: 202
        • 2022: 179
      • Pre-Process (IMBA)
        • 2024: $7,024
        • 2023: $7,836
        • 2022: $8,009
      • Post(est)
        • 2024: $5,743
        • 2023: $6,006
        • 2022: $6,688
      • Total Membership
        • 2024: 1922
        • 2023: 2063
        • 2022: 1901
      • New Memberships
        • 2024: 14
        • 2023: 30
        • 2022: 49
      • Monthly Members
        • 2024: 93
        • 2023: 83
        • 2022: 73
      • Annual Auto
        • 2024: 801/583
        • 2023: 743/563
        • 2022: 580/456
      • Rick Dotson: I auto joined in April and found it difficult. Don’t know how it works and was going through IMBA and was trying to get to MORE, and family got to MORE, and tried to log in. Found it very confusing.
  • Trails
    • Virginia (Michael)

      • One of the pieces that Rick talked about is the Brookfield pump track. On June 28, myself and liaison for the park met with representative of Fairfax Parks. Walked it with him. That is the plan to extent the CCT, which would connect Brookfield with Accotink and Wakefield. This plan is a forgone conclusion. County was out there flagging it and told us moving ahead with the CCT in that area. All he asked from MORE was to give him some help with shaping and volunteers.
      • Jali took the lead with an event in September 15 at Locust Shade called the Jump Fest. The jump line is getting tweaked and they are adding additional table tops to the jump line. This is already set up and dirt has been dumped out there. There will be group rides, optional jump clinics, bringing in person from TakeAim.
    • Maryland (Dave M)

      • Vegetation management season. Trying to get hedge trimmers in the hands of people. Although the dry weather is helping with vegetation.
      • As far as trail development, it has been a slow process with Maryland turning our 3 grant awards into actual grants we can spend. This includes NW Branch, Patuxent, and Seneca Greenway. It is a very complicated process.
      • We submitted two RTP grants. Heard from a member of the RTP that they thought the grants were solid and well written, but we don’t know the votes yet. We won’t here for 4 more months. In particular, hoping for adaptive development in Rosaryville.
      • The gravity trails at Wheaton are finished. The ribbon cutting is a week from Sunday (July 21) at 11am. They did a nice job.
  • Friends of Patapsco Valley State Park
    • Jali
      • Pushing a join membership, where its $100 that gets you a MORE membership and Patapsco membership. This doesn’t cost us anything. MORE gets $40 per member and at the end of August, we are going to share a list of members and anyone who is a member of both MORE and Patapsco will get limited edition swag.

Activity Reports

• President – Casey Anderson
  • [*]

• Jali Fernando – Executive Director
• MoCo Epic preparations
• Met with Fairfax County Parks Authority on new trails in Sully Woodlands
• Met with Montgomery Parks and Councilmember Natali Fani-Gonzalez on Wheaton Park funding
• Submitted an Adventist HealthCare event grant for the MoCo Epic
• Submitted an IM ABLE Foundation event grant for Epic adaptive ride
• Managed Dig In fundraising for adaptive MTB loop in Patapsco
• Represented MORE and sold memberships at Filipino MTB event in Gaithersburg
• Mailed prizes to Spring Membership Drive winners
• Set up MORE Summer Picnic on BikeReg
• Set up Adaptive MTB Day on BikeReg
• Assisted Locust Shade team with BikeReg setup for the Jump Fest, 9/15
• Processed refunds for canceled MTB clinics with Hillary
• Setup a mailbox with UPS
• Setup tent at Wednesdays at Wakefield races, 6/19, 7/3, 7/10
• Working on additional county public school partnerships and scouts for student service trail work hours
• Regular communications (newsletter, social media)
• Secretary – David Beugelmans
  • Coordinated board meeting and finalized minutes
  • Attend Anne Arundel County Crownsville Memorial Park Recreation and Trails Committee meetings
  • Various regulatory filings

• MD Advocacy Director – Dave Magill
• Trimming trails, updating trim tracker
• Coordinated chainsawing efforts
• Call with Patapsco Park Manager and FOPVSP ED on waivers and liability issues for the Patapsco FUN Series migration to the DNR signup platform and waiver
• Continue to try to move various grant awards to the point where we can spend the money

• VA Advocacy Director – Michael Ullman
• Assisting Locust Shade Liaisons with planning a Jumpfest for 9/15/24. 
• Met with Fairfax Parks trail manager Jim Corcoran as well as Pat Childers from Brookfield Pump Track/trails for youth on 6/28 to walk/flag the future extension of CCT at Brookfield Park. 
• Attended various sMOREs rides as well as some ride along with various VA Liaisons 

• Membership Director – Rob Lowe
  • MORE Mail Processing
  • Membership Processing

• Ride Program Director – Kathy Mihm
  • Ride set ups, emails, and manage calendar listings
  • Set up new sMORE's group ride in Carroll County at Hashawha
  • Set up new MoCo Monday group rides in Golden, Calendar and Meetup
  • Compile thoughts on MORE Membership
  • Summer Picnic ride group planning
  • Held Beginner MTB Skills Clinic at SGBP
  • Led Monday and Thursday night rides
  • Manage MORE bike travel boxes
  • Correspondence with Gears and Beers on group MORE ride

• Communications Director – N/A

• Treasurer – Neil Blake
• -0.7k net general decrease
  • $10.1k General Revenues
  • $5.8k Memberships
  • $1.5k interest income
  • $1.4k MoCo Epic sponsorships
  • $0.7k general donations
  • $0.6 Other
• $10.8 General Expenses
  • $6.5k ED cost
  • $3.5k MoCo Epic (Key Sanitation)
  • $0.7k Other
• -18.5k Net Restricted Decrease
  • 3k Restricted Revenues (Hashawha)
• $18.8k Restricted Expenses
  • $16.8k Frederick Watershed (Greenstone Trailcraft)
  • $1k Wakefield (Lumber from Cathy Reidel)
  • $0.7k Hashawha
  • $0.3k Other

• Activities Director – Clay Deming
  • Summer Picnic Planning and Coordinating
  • Initial help with Fall Camping, Locust Shade and River's Edge potential events.
  • Reaching out to bike companies for funding for sMORE's tshirts.
  • Moco Epic sock.