May 2021 Board of Directors Meeting Minutes and Activity Reports

• • Meeting Attendance 
• o Ernie Rodriguez - President
• o Peggy Flaxman - Executive Director 
• o Tom Howe - VA Advocacy Director
• o Rob Lowe - Membership Director
• o Clay Deming - Activities Director 
• o David Beugelmans - Vice President 
• o Neil Blake – Treasurer
• o Kathy Mihm – Communications Director

 

• • Financial Updates
• o Neil
•  Note: I did not include forgiveness of first PPP loan, which will add $10k into general fund. 
•  $7.8k general revenues
• • $5.6k memberships
• • $1.9k general donations
•  $5.4k general expenses
• • $4.5k ED comp
• • $0.8k various other misc expenses
•  $1.3k restricted fund revenues
• • Various donations mainly from the website
•  $27.5k restricted fund expenses
• • $23.1k general working capital (patuxent)
• • $3.8k Locust Shade
• • $0.8k various others 
• o New General Trail Fund Policy/Application Process
•  Dave
• • Rolled out to the liasions the trail funds policy allowing them on first come first serve basis to apply to trails committee to apply for up to $10k
• • Have received two applications so far. One is from Patapsco, which is doing a $70,000 trail build and is looking for $10,000 from MORE. 
• • The other is another section at Locust Shade. Martin has just enough money to cover the advance loop and has plans for more. 
• • Those two will be addressed by the trails committee.
• • At this point, hasn’t seen any more. Have talked to several liaisons thinking about submitting applications.
• • So you have two very well organized groups coming out of the really fast and more will likely come.
• • Not sure if $70k will be used very fast or not, but don’t have a situation where we will need to ration money.
• • We held a conference call and got a subset of liaisons. Maybe we could reach out to first email to see if there’s any last people we could reach.
•  Ernie
• • Had conference call with Anthony and Jen at IMBA and outlined grants policy. Told them they aren’t trying to influence them, but letting them know that there are different maturity levels and we have done that. We are funding trail projects internally. 
• • One questions they had was what we have on ride leaders. Ernie suggested that they share whatever they want from the website. 
•  Dave
• • Maryland RTP grant deadline was April 30. MORE submitted two grant applications, both in the range of $50k each. 
• • One is for River’s Edge, where Carlo has approval for another 1.5 miles of trail and a Kiosk.
• • Also Emmitsburg, Tim O’Donnell submitted. He is looking to fix trails damaged by fire and logging. Will also add family friendly trail. 
• • Could be September or October before we know, but they are highly targeted for what RTP does. 
• • Membership updates
• o Rob:
•  For April had good month, up almost $1700 from the previous year
•  We’ve only had two months that underperformed from previous year in 16 months. 
•  Membership numbers are going up into solid 1600
•  Big thing that he has seen is that renewals against membership drive has been a little low. 
•  We didn’t start to get big numbers last year until the end of May last year, and we’re already starting to see that this year.
•  In the last day or two, have trended back to where we should be.
•  Don’t know if we will meet numbers this month, but have 21 days left this month. 
•  Will be starting my emailings this week and will start chasing people down.
•  Between the two months, will be even with last year. 
• o Ernie:
•  Had a really nice email from Lori Backi, who said she will spread the word.
•  Most of MeetUp signups are women, and try to write personal notes.
•  She had a good point: she shares benefits of MORE during MeetUp group.
•  Think we can diversity our approach to membership and just keep hitting it on social media, webpage, newsletter, etc.
• o Peggy:
•  Should we do a new trail sign asking people to join MORE
•  Kathy: Has a trailhead flier and getting them printed up. They are permanent advertisements for MORE trailheads.
• o Dave B
•  Supports idea of doing this on a yearly basis but with new graphics and bright colors to force people to see them. 
• o Peggy:
•  Has idea of doing targeted signs for liaisons and areas that want/need them and high traffic areas. 
• o Membership Drive - IMBA Schedule vs MORE Schedule - Planned 
•  Rob: Trying to do stuff when IMBA isn’t scheduling stuff and with what Peggy is doing, this really isn’t an issue.
•  Peggy: Rob and IMBA are using the same database. But social media is different and reaching lots of new people. 
•  Dave B: suggested BoD members share to pages.  
• o Membership swag (2 minutes)
•  Peggy: Have several outstanding large donations in $250 range and can’t send them something because we don’t have shirts
•  From Club Ridge, we need to order 80 shirts
•  Need direction from BoD about what to do. 
•  Agreement to delegate to Peggy
• • IT Issues
• o Peggy: Discovered that when we set somebody up as a user on more-mtb.org and we give them a license to use Microsoft, they have open access to everything on our intranet. 
•  We have about 60 users and they are able to go into the intranet via Sharepoint. 
• o Tom will work with Peggy to solve issue. 
• o Rob: We should also discuss a data retention policy in the IT Committee. General agreement that this should be pursued. 
• • Future BoD Meetings (virtual, in-person, hybrid?)
• o Peggy: What are we thinking? Are we going to do things virtually? If we do hybrid, we need to think about how to do that. 
•  If we remain virtual, we should provide better notice to people. We need to make sure that people know. 
• o Neil: Another question is whether REI is available. And right now it isn’t, we means we need to stay virtual.
• o Ernie: Think he is right. We should stay virtual.
• o Rob: My view is that we should probably be virtual most of them and twice of year do a planned in person. We should have the transition meeting in person and the retreat. 
• • Communications
• o Kathy
•  Annual report is pretty much done
• • Need to confirm that the sponsor list is correct.
• • Need to figure out logistics. Will send it around one more time for one last look.
• • Events
• o MoCo Epic 
•  Peggy:
• • MoCo has changed guidelines for reopening. Changing group size numbers based off percentage of population vaccinated. When get to 60% with two vaccines, there will be no restrictions.
• • Have in-person kick-off meeting scheduled for May 26 with South Germantown Bike Park. 
• • Initial focus will be to figure out what group wants to keep or change.
• • Won’t put applications in until we know more about restrictions, because at this point we would need a lot of COVID safety information.
• • Going to get timeline together shortly after that. 
•  Ernie:
• • Likes idea of meeting at Bike Park, but there isn’t good internet.  
• o Summer Picnic / Membership Meeting?
• o Establish a Ride Leader Community
•  Ernie: Did some data mining for him. Peggy helped and established a mailing list for ride leaders. Having new blood is awesome.
• • This is a brilliant idea and just mined Trackit Forward to match them with email addresses.
• • Trying to start what liaisons have, with ride leaders. 
• o sMORE’s swag/T-shirts
•  Peggy: We need to make sure that we can get sMOREs SWAG to all areas. 
•  Ernie: The issue has been connecting to the different groups. Distribution is the biggest issue. We have done prints.
•  Peggy: Where did this come from?
• • Elaine gave them to somebody. Peggy will check. They may be in the MoCo shed. 
• o Women’s Maintenance Clinic
• • Trails
• o Virginia
•  Had monthly trail liaison meeting and had new faces attend.
•  Martin is making really good process.
•  Lake Fairfax just held first race on new trail, which went very well.
•  Mount Vernon is continuing to do trailwork
•  Now there are RTP funds available in Virginia because they are $50 and $100k. Will work with liaisons on this. 
•  Peggy:
• • Got information on reverse day for national trails day. They are going to reverse the direction at Fountainhead. 
• • Also kudos for what is going on Lake Fairfax. Got really good reception. 
• o Maryland
•  Loch Raven
• • Peggy: Owned by City of Baltimore, but in Baltimore County. Only legal mountain biking. There is actually over 50 miles of singletrack. People are riding it.
• o There is a new mayor in Baltimore and people thought it was good time to address.
• o Got group together and has created Microsoft Teams, team. 
• o There is a local community pushing this. 
• • Ernie:
• o We have learned our lessons because when we first started getting involved, for the third time, was the first time we had an executive director. Our executive director spent a ton of time. Got upset because IMBA came in once and was gone.
• o Didn’t want Peggy to get stuck with it. Our approach is we will help and support them and enable them. It needs to be local.

 

 

 

April Activity Reports

 

• • President – Ernest (Ernie) Rodriguez

• o Virginia Trails Alliance meeting
• o Contribute to MORE's Annual Report
• o Contribute to MORE Trailhead News
• o Participate with National Park Service for plan for Catoctin Trail Plan North/South corridor
• o Help update Trail Fund Policy
• o Participate with Wakefield Trail Work Day
• o Finance Committee meeting
• o Training sessions for Golden Volunteer tracking

 

• • Executive Director – Peggy Flaxman

• o Website Updates

•  Added Andrew Leitch
•  Updated landing page
•  Addition of dynamic elements on landing page (in progress)
•  Updates to sponsors/contributors/partner (in progress)
•  Addition of Trailforks to trail pages (in progress)

 

• o IT

•  Ongoing efforts to standardize and provide access while maintaining integrity

 

• o sMORE’s

•  Updated webpage
•  Updated distribution lists

 

• o Submitted TrailsCount Application (not aware)
• o Two for the Trails Application (in progress)
• o Webinars

•  Virginia DCR
•  IMBA Membership Drive
•  Trailbuilding (American Trails, 1 of 3)

 

• o Trailwork

•  Wakefield
•  Lake Fairfax

• o Events

•  sMORE’s (LFP)
•  Tent Event (Schaeffer Farm)
•  Quantico Epic
•  Women’s MTB Day
•  Rails to River @ LFP

 

• o Membership Drive (ongoing)
• o Trails Committee Rollout of GTF Changes

•  Created fillable form
•  Creating menu of trail items/work with corresponding cost

• o MoCo Epic

•  Permitting
•  Kick-off Meeting planned

 

• o Liaisons

•  Updated liaisons list and corresponding DLs
•  Liaison Guide (in progress)

• o Virginia Trails Alliance Meeting
• o Loch Raven advocacy meeting with stakeholders.

 

• • Vice President – David Beugelmans
• o Online store marketing activities
• o Anne Arundel County
•  Attend City of Annapolis/Annapolis Gateway Shopping Center video conference re: parking; draft follow-up emails re: same
•  Coordinate and install Housley Road Kiosk
•  Coordinate “Pine Line” skills area work
•  Call w/ SHA District 5 re: Waterworks/Bacon Ridge connection

 

• • MD Advocacy Director – Dave Magill

 

• o []

 

• • VA Advocacy Director – Tom Howe

• o Wakefield Trail Work Planning
• o Dropped off Kombi and DR for Locust Shade Trail Work Trimming Day 
• o Participated and Supported Schaeffer Tent Event
• o MORE Trail Fund Grant Discussion w/ Liaisons
• o Monthly DC/VA Liaisons Meeting

 

• • Membership Director – Rob Lowe

1. o Membership Processing
2. o Wakefield Trailwork
3. o Wakefield Trailwork Planning

 

• • Communications Director – Kathy Mihm

• o Worked with Andrew Melito and BOD on Annual Report, which is nearly completed.
• o Compiled and Issued Spring Trailhead Newsletter
• o Worked with Peggy on Website
• o Worked on design for S’More postcard for distribution at bike shops (still in progress)
• o Prepared Trail Work Ahead and Trail Closed Ahead signs, these are ready for production
• o Nearly ready to order Trailhead Flyer – finalize design and vendor
• o Provided Beginner Skills Clinic for ~ 30 people to promote MORE, Trails, and skills (Beginner Skills Clinic @ Ten Mile Creek on 4/3 and Beginner Clinic and Beginner Ride @ Schaeffer on 4/24; provided Instructor Training to Sue Estes on 4/24 event; Women’s Beginner Skills Clinic @ Cabin John on 4/22)
• o Lead Women’s ride at Cabin John on 4/28
• o Prepared Clinic Instructor Training sheet

• • Treasurer – Neil Blake
• o Restricted fund balance - $239.5k (includes $50k transfer from the general fund)
• o General fund balance - $184.3k
• o $7.8k general revenues
•  $5.6k memberships
•  $1.9k general donations
• o $5.4k general expenses
•  $4.5k ED comp
•  $0.8k various other misc expenses
• o $1.3k restricted fund revenues
•  Various donations mainly from the website
• o $27.5k restricted fund expenses
•  $23.1k general working capital (patuxent)
•  $3.8k Locust Shade
•  $0.8k various others 

 

• • Activities Director – Clay Deming
• o Spring Seek Distro and trail placement
• o Tent Event @ Schaeffer
• o sMORE’s ride
• o Trail work at Wakefield and Locust Shade
• o Ride leader organization session.
• o Read over and edit Annual Report and Spring news.