May 2021 Board of Directors Meeting Minutes and Activity Reports

 

• Meeting Attendance
  • Ernie Rodriguez - President
  • Peggy Flaxman - Executive Director
  • Tom Howe - VA Advocacy Director
  • Rob Lowe - Membership Director
  • Clay Deming - Activities Director
  • David Beugelmans - Vice President
  • Dave Magill - MD Advocacy Director
  • Neil Blake - Treasurer
  • Kathy Mihm – Communications Director
  • Jamie Wiedhahn – Family Ride Coordinator

 

• Financial Updates
  • $13.4k General revenues
    • $4.8k memberships, $7.5 Network for Good, $1k other
  • $15.8k General expenses
    • $5.9k insurance, $4.6k ED, $3.1k financials and taxes, $2.3 other
  • $22k Restricted fund revenues
    • $12k grants working capital for Patuxent, $6.6k Lake Farifax, $1.2k SGBP, $1k Locust Shade 
  • $14.3k Restricted fund expenses
    • $12k grants working capital for Patuxent, $1.6k Bacon Ridge (mostly lumber), $0.8k Waterworks
  • Review sponsorship processes
    • Peggy: We have gone through all of the money we received in 2020, so people are getting at least a year
      • We have reached out to everyone on website and asked if they still wanted to be a sponsor. We got some responses and some checks.
      • Wants to move forward with updating website and getting correct list for annual report.
      • We are also going to add “contributors” and “partners”. Partners are groups like TYO that weren’t giving money but helping with mission. Contributors give in-kind donations (i.e., companies giving discounts, etc.).
      • Dave B: We should get the word out of these different tiers to make sure people know and can take advantage of it.
      • Kathy: We should update website.
      • Dave M: Should we have a minimum dollar value for contributors.
        • Ernie: We agreed to $500 minimum level
  • Membership updates
• Rob
• We almost doubled March 2021 over March 2020 at $5430 vs 2840 in 2020.
• For the Quarter Pre IMBA Fee we were up over $6K from 2020 Q1.  Post fee we should be around $14K.  
• Membership has been hovering right around 1600, with today's auto renewals and any new joins we should "officially" tick over into 1600 hopefully.  Then the march to 1700, with the membership drive coming next month it would be a good target!  100 New Members and long term lapsed renewals possibly?
• Join rate shot back up over February back to 30 new Joins!   That's how/what we need most months.  
• I added a tracker to Total Members showing that we were at 1100 or so a few years ago.  Basic graph for sure.  
• Loss - I'm working on a new loss tracker but it's honestly a mess to do and present in any way for short term vs long term.  
• Spring Membership Drive
• Peggy: IMBA is changing membership drives so there will only be a spring membership drive, no October. October is going to be more focused around fundraising.
• May and June will be traditional membership drive.
• Monthly Membership - Raffle for new joiners and for renewals - Do we want to give some schwag away to new joiners 1x a month or to renewals, say $20 a piece worth?
• Rob: Do we want to come up with a budget and give away schwag? IMBA’s giveaway is good, but we had zero people win any of the raffles.
• We should be giving away our own Swag, like fenders, etc, and not really advertise it.
• Dave B – We should give away stuff from store or store credit
• Tom – Idea of giving out store credit to folks based off how much they volunteer.
• Ernie – Recommended for Peggy and Rob to work this out.
• Communications
• Review schedule for finalizing and publishing MORE’s Annual Report
• Ernie: Thank you to Kathy for keeping everything on track
• Kathy: Gave everything to Andrew. The one piece that is missing is the sponsorship information. Once that’s done, Andrew will put in photos and then its pretty much done.
• Peggy: Will follow up
• Schedule for gathering, reviewing and publishing Spring Trailhead News
• Kathy: This is done except for the president’s message.
• Ernie: We should get together and talk about whether this message should be from executive director
• Kathy: Need short description for membership, also need to figure out what MORE store items to include.
• Refresh on Leading Articles on Website?
• Rob: Looked at website last week and leading articles were stale.
• Topic: The MORE website is our front piece but for a newbie it is difficult to navigate and it is difficult to find some basic information (calendar, trail work). For a website upgrade should we hire a web designer as the effort may be too much to ask Peggy/Martin (and fresh eyes may be needed)?
• Kathy:
• The basic framework and organization is off. It’s hard to find the MORE calendar
• Dave M
• You should find a consultant who can do a proposal to redo the website
• Jason
• Likes website as is, but maybe can make some small changes
• Rob
• Doesn’t want to do a website redesign. It was a huge hassle to redo everything.
• Peggy:
• Some things we can do is change the theme of website. We can change theme so it looks fresher.
• It is balance between changing website and making it look better.
• We may also want to set up cheater domains to get to certain sites faster.
• General agreement that we should have further calls on changes
• Jason:
• When first opened page was very impressed and though it was a profession webpage. That said, think doing aesthetic updates would make it better. We could also do a survey.
• Topic Consider using Trailforks or MTBproject to add an interactive web map on website or our own map
• Dave B: Votes for Trailforks
• Kathy: We’ve talked a long time about having a central map. We can either use Trailforks or MTBproject. I could also make out own map. Thinks Trailforks serves purpose pretty well.
• Jason: Use Trailforks and MTBproject, but concern is whether those sites that the trail owners appreciate.
• Ernie: We need to reinstitute IT committee. We’ve gone through many iterations to get things built.
• Dave M: Idea of having larger MORE map and then it brings you to individual pages for trails when you click it.
• MORE history project - MORE's 30 year anniversary is coming up next year. Peggy has an archive of photos -  how best to ID and document participants/events in these photos?  Could we do this as a display board at the summer event or MoCo epic, with the option for people to ID people/events in the photos?  How can we get an archive of MORE's 30 year history?
• Kathy: Don’t know much about this, but we should think about it.
• Ernie: Next year is our 30^th anniversary and we need to come up with a plan for an event, a picture with timeline, etc to show people what their connection to MORE is.
• We need to organize this and mobilize this. We should for a committee to do this. We need to make sure the committee is able to work together and get a product together.
• Dave M: We should get a list of MORE successes. Would be happy to contribute. And there is a lot in the near term and in the past to tell.
• Dave B: Need a base document of accomplishments and will send it out.
• Dave M or Ernie will get list together of items and will circulate it for liaisons to fill out.
• "Beyond the Dirt" campaign - This ties to rider education/communication and is an effort to provide more than building trails. What are the key items needed? Can we formalize this proposal and get a plan of action together.
• Kathy: We need to figure out key items of what to accomplish
• Dave B: I think liaisons just want to meet up and talk.
• Dave M: Agrees with this. Core question is should we be driving for liaison meeting for before or after MoCo Epic?
• Supports doing after MoCo Epic. We should create date for liaison meeting and advertise it.
• Tom: Supports doing it after MoCo.
• Peggy: Can Dave and Tom pick a date, and she will organize it.
• Ernie: Thinks Kathy is on to something. There is a lot of input into this.
• Dave M: Likes the idea of seeding ideas to try to make the liaison meeting more productive and get people thinking about new ideas before meeting.
• Peggy: If we can get a few liaisons to start discussions to talk about certain topics. That’s how we are going to bridge the gap between people who think it’s second nature.
• Dave M: We should use the liaison thread with themes. The first one should be vegetation management.
• Dave M: Will push this along.
• Events
• MoCo Epic
• Typically we are permitting in March for the MoCo Epic. MoCo is currently permitting events for 50 participants or less. Gone back and forth with permitting office.
• MoCo has asked for MORE to show how we will meet county and CDC guidelines. These are not things we can answer. Realistically it doesn’t make sense.
• Asked if we should put in permit for rides only.
• Montgomery Parks asked for us to submit “best case scenario” and we can take it from there if restrictions change in Maryland.
• MoCo is not permitting events more than 50 people.
• Peggy believes that we may get rides permitted, but less convinced we’ll get party permitted.
• Dave M: end of May we should have ride only permit request in, and then in June/July they may grant party request. The only potential resource that has any extra demand is the big tent, and we’ll just deal with it.
• MoCo Epic Logo Change
• Kathy: Put this out there to have a facelift for the MoCo Epic logo. In the interim we decided to stick with the current logo.
• We can put the decision out for the MoCo Epic team to see if they want to update.
• Dave M: Likes new logo and raised possibility to doing two logos at the same time.
• National Women’s Mountain Biking Day Activities
• Ernie: Had negative response but people did respond. A lot of women leaders are going to be out of town May 1. But there will be some rides. Kathy is going to lead a ride in Maryland. We need to promote this on social media and get the word out there.
• Peggy: Simona said she is going to do one at Lake Fairfax. She is going to Little Bennett that day to support NICL ride. It will be an inclusive event.
• Scavenger Hunt Update
• Clay: Finished all of the puzzles and made packet for everything. That is done.
• Set up Google registration to see who is interested. Has 15 teams signed up, with to four per team. So 40 or 45 people signed up.
• Not going to cap it. Will put puzzles out there and people will still do it.
• Dave M: Thinks idea is a good one so it is good to send polite reminder updates for folks to do it.
• Has become convinced a lot of our donations and supporters come from us reaching out to a wider group of bikers.
• There are people who are seeing this and are happy even if they aren’t going to participate.
• Tent Events
• Clay: The next event is April 24 at Schaeffer. Will send out email to see who might be interested.
• Was also talk of setting up tent at Quantico
• Dave B: Raised idea of going to Bacon Ridge
• Summer Festival (Schedule)
• Ernie: Don’t have a date in mind, but are hoping for best.
• Fall Camping
• Clay: Talked with Sharon and Phil. They are planning it and trying to set it up. Trying to get prior breakfast vendor back in service.
• Did want to know what budget was so Clay gave Sharon budgeted number.
• Trails
• Virginia (Tom)
• Lots of trailwork days.
• Locust Shade had trailwork day and Wakefield as well.
• Started doing monthly virtual meeting again for liaisons.
• Chris Randal joined meeting. He is very interested in doing bike parks in Prince William County.
• Maryland (Dave)
• Information: not dirt trails, but you may have read that the Maryland legislature has funded $10 million to paved bike trail from Muddy Branch to Cabin John on Pepco Powerline. There will be a great way to connect and make more loops. Believes will be used by mountain bikers.
• Preview of proposal: Just had trails committee meeting. MORE has over $200k in unrestricted funds. Some of us proposed that we start putting more of that back into the trails. Neil has been supportive idea of taking $50k and put it into general trails fund and really encourage liaisons to develop more ideas for growing trails.
• We are creating opportunity for $2k to be available for a reasonable request and higher amounts up to $15k where MORE would match money that is raised by the liaison through whatever methods they have for raising money.
• Key to this is decision on the part of the BoD.
• BoD needs to decide whether to move general funds to trail funds. There is going to be a process for control with trails committee to oversee projects, focused on the dirt. We are not going to fund food, etc.
• We are going to have mentorship and trail committee approval of these projects. We will make sure land managers approve projects.
• In the past, we restricted funds to hand built trails, but this will be open to bridges, technical features, bike parks. All the things people want this can do.
• Neil: Comfortable with $50k going into trail system.
• Because BoD is designated into trail fund, it can also take it out.
• Loaner Travel Bike Bags
• Peggy: These already exist. In 2015, Thule donated two bike travel cases. One was stored in MD and one in VA. Intended for member use.

Activity Reports

 

 

• President – Ernest (Ernie) Rodriguez
  • Great workday at Wakefield yesterday
  • Social media post in support of surveys, rides and general information
  • Distribute "Respect Trails" stickers to liaisons and land managers
  • Arlington Trails meeting with Chairman of Arlington Board of Supervisors
  • Working to recruit and engage Baltimore "Advocacy and Development Team" New mayor, new contacts
  • Support of our "Beyond the Dirt" communications, engagement and mentoring conversations
  • Meetings with National Park Service for Advocacy
  • Meetings with Greater Prince William County Trails Coalition - Aspitational Trails planning
  • Wakefield planning and preparation work
  • Internal vetting of projects for REI grant application
  • Review and edit Annual Report
  • Visit Andy Guest/Shenandoah State Park to gain approval for Wednesday Night Riding
  • Asked to perform a casual assessment of Andy Guest State Park for trail, conditions, mitigation and improvements
  • Attend DC/VA Advocacy team meeting
  • Support Pete Beers Memorial fundraising campaign with Bikenetic team  

 

• Executive Director – Peggy Flaxman
  • sMORE’s Program
    • Worked with program leader to updated sMORE’s Distro Lists for each ride being held
    • Updated calendar to reflect spring sMORE’s rides
    • Updated website with current info, including COVID guidelines
    • Got process for starting new program documentation from Elaine, posted in sMORE’s
  • MoCo Epic:
    • Prepared 2 versions of permit application + COVID addendums as required by Montgomery Parks.  Currently they are approving applications for events of 50 or fewer.  Waiting on possible changes to guidelines.  Addendums require that we indicate how we will meet  Montgomery County, State of Maryland and CDC COVID protocols.  Completing these made it clear how difficult this will be even when doing a “ride only” event.
    • Permit for ride only (plus addendum)
    • Permit for ride + after-party (plus addendum)
  • Sponsorships:
    • Contacted previous sponsors and supporters
    • In process of updating website
    • Update to list of sponsor
    • Adding Contributors (to recognize in-kind donations, other non-monetary contributions)
    • Adding Partners (i.e. TYO)
    • Created tracking mechanism for sponsorships
  • Submitted Trails Count Application
  • Website Updates (ongoing)
  • MORE Store 
    • Weekly Review (flagged purchases)
    • Monthly Reports to Neil
  • Donor Swag
  • Annual Awards:
    • Delivered to Patuxent & MoCo 
    • Weekly Postings
  • Arlington Trails Meeting
  • IMBA Membership Drive Meeting
  • PWC Occoquan Meeting
  • PHTA Meeting
  • Trail Building Policy Meeting (internal)
  • REI Application Meeting (internal)
  • VA Liaison Meeting (internal)

 

• Vice President – David Beugelmans
  • Attended meeting re: revised MORE trail grants
  • Waterworks
    • Continued sign project, including location QR code signs
    • Additional benching in problematic areas
    • Attended city meeting re: parking at shopping center
    • Contacted County re: off-road Waterworks/Bacon Ridge connection

 

• MD Advocacy Director – Dave Magill

 

• West MoCo Sign Project – 6 work sessions 30 posts and maps installed so far out of 50, taking bids on custom decals for new carsonite posts
• Patuxent – led trail workday, nearly finished final volunteer clearing for Phase 1.  Working with DNR on exact location and permitting approach for Phase 2 trails and parking, including scouting session with DNR looking at alternatives
• SGBP – working with Todd Bauer on a possible RTP grant application for a new intermediate jump line
• Rivers Edge – working with Carlo Alfano on an RTP grant for 1.25 miles of new trail
• Reviewed and edited draft MORE annual report
• Helped draft info for Trailhead news
• Submitted testimony in support of Montgomery Parks’ 2022 budget
• Worked to Kathy and Peggy to encourage people to answer a survey in Rockville for uses for Redgate Park near Lake Needwood, including trails and a bike skills park
• Working on new plan to fund $50k of new projects throughout MORE territory, with projects to be proposed by liaisons

 

• VA Advocacy Director – Tom Howe

• Finished draft of VA Advocacy section of Annual Report
• Scheduled new Monthly DC and VA Trail Liaison Meeting series to use Teams (as we lapsed for a couple of months) for the first Monday of every month
• Discussed Dave’s proposal for Amendments to the Trail Building Policy and use of GTF w/  Dave, David, Ernie, Neil, and Peggy which is now pending review by the Trails Committee  
• Discussed and ranked candidate projects for REI Grant application w/ Dave, David, Ernie, and Peggy
• Held April Monthly DC and VA Trail Liaison Meeting
• Coordinating the pick up and delivery of donated Stihl tools from (Mike and Susan) to the liaisons at Lake Fairfax Park (Stihl Line Trimmer) and Mount Vernon District Park (Stihl Leaf Blower)
• Wakefield Trail Workday Prep

• Membership Director – Rob Lowe
  • Membership Processing
  • Membership Cleanup Prep - Round 2 - another 20-30 records found.
  • Wakefield Ad-Hoc Trailwork and Prep for Trail work days.

 

• Communications Director – Kathy Mihm
• Annual report – 2020 Annual report is being developed and a draft is ready for review.
• MORE Business Cards – designed and ordered. Cards were places in plastic boxes at a few trailheads in MoCo to test durability and weather resistance.  These are ready for distribution at MORE events, bike shops, etc.
• MoCo Epic Business Cards – preliminary MoCo Epic business cards were developed and ordered. These cards provide the date but no registration information as that is not yet determined.
• MORE Trailhead flyer – on order for 120 copies 8.5” x 11” coroplast signs for posting at trailheads
• Smores Postcard – preliminary design for post card advertising S’mores program and MORE. For distribution at bike shops, MORE events, etc.
• Searching for Instructors to help with Beginner Skills Clinics – emails sent and some correspondence
• Beginner skills clinic – held one clinic on April 3
• Mapping projects – MoCo maps finished up, Frederick Watershed planning maps completed.
• Spring 2020 Trailhead Newsletter is underway with plans to release in April.

--------------------------------------------

Trailhead flyer – on order for printing: (MoCo parks and generic versions available)

 

MORE Business Cards for Events, posting in plexiglass boxes at Trailheads”

 

Temporary MoCo Epic Cards:

 

 

• Treasurer – Neil Blake
  • $13.4k General revenues
    • $4.8k memberships, $7.5 Network for Good, $1k other
  • $15.8k General expenses
    • $5.9k insurance, $4.6k ED, $3.1k financials and taxes, $2.3 other
  • $22k Restricted fund revenues
    • $12k grants working capital for Patuxent, $6.6k Lake Farifax, $1.2k SGBP, $1k Locust Shade 
  • $14.3k Restricted fund expenses
    • $12k grants working capital for Patuxent, $1.6k Bacon Ridge (mostly lumber), $0.8k Waterworks
  • Activities Director – Clay Deming
    • Updating Spring Seek Design
    • Going through RWGPS routes for beginner info
    • Testing the waters with Twitter