Board Meeting: August 10th, 2009 7:00-8:00

Present:
Jim Colbert, Jay Klein, Gary Wayne Cook, Richard Hughes, Paul Adkins, Michal Young. A quorum of board members was present. Michal agreed to take notes.
-Brief Introductions
-Approval of minutes from July’s meeting
The meeting minutes having been previously distributed and reviewed electronically, they were unanimously approved by the board members present.

Non-Action Items:
1) Treasurer’s report
Richard reviewed our overall budget position and recent transactions. He is in the process of comparing our current position relative to a year ago, but we will not have a complete picture of expenses and income from bRamble and Jamboree for a little while yet. So far he has a complete picture through July. Notable transactions explained by Richard include:
$773 in two deposits from Paypal. This reflects a surge in membership, attributable to two causes: The $10 member discount on bRamble participation (making a $12 membership quite a bargain), and a Eugene Weekly article on the bike rewards program. Larger than usual expenditures on postage reflect Richard mailing of more than 100 helmet stickers, and buying some stamps ahead for the time he anticipates being away. Stamps will be held by Paul during Richard’s absence. $1862 was spent on T-shirts for the bRamble and Jamboree, and a considerable amount on Chico bags, adding up to approximately $4000 in volunteer and merchandise expenses for the bRamble and Jamboree. (Discussion of insurance began here and was continued when we reached item 4 on the agenda; the discussion is reported below under item 4)

2) Membership Director’s Report
Michal reported current membership counts from the club roster:
19 contributing memberships (plus additional family members)
68 household memberships (plus additional family members)
139 individual members
1 business membership plus 15 sponsored employees
——
227 paid memberships (plus family and sponsored members)
12 complementary memberships (newspapers and radio stations, etc)

Richard noted that a second business member will soon be added.

Michal has recently added a “sponsor” column to the roster. This field links sponsored members to an associated paid membership. Currently it ties memberships of type “Sponsored” to their business sponsor, which so far ties them to Keystone Cafe, and soon to our second business member. The same column will be used to tie additional family members to a household membership. Membership type “Family” is being used to indicate additional family members associated with a household membership. A tentative decision has been made to use the same membership number for all persons sharing a household membership, which will make it easy to view household members together by sorting on member number. Michal has begun breaking up combined household membership records with names like “John & Mary / Doe & Smith” into a membership of type “Household” for Mary Smith and a linked membership of type “Family” for John Doe. So far he is up to “H” in the roster.

3) 501(c)(3) Update
Richard gave an update on creating a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation for GEARS. He estimates the cost of doing this will be about $2000, and since it seems a necessary step, we should probably set the money aside soon. For example, lack of 501(c)(3) status kept us from getting food donations for the bRamble. The best approach seems to be having separate boards (perhaps partly overlapping, but not completely) for GEARS as a social club organization and a distinct 501(c)(3) organization for charitable purposes. The rules for the 501(c)(3) are stricter, particularly as regards advocacy, so the board of that organization may require some training. One potential resource is TACS (Technical Assistance for Community Service, http://www.tacs.org/), which trains non-profit boards.

Richard reported that attorney David Atkin has been very helpful and has a great deal of experience with non-profits, as he works with them exclusively. He has worked with Food for Lane County and the Center for Appropriate Transport, among other local non-profits.

We need to establish a working group to move this process forward and make recommendations to the board and membership.

4) Accident Report and Insurance Update (10 min)
Richard noted that we have not yet paid for insurance for the bRamble. Insurance for the event is based on our annual insurance policy as a club, and is paid after the event in proportion to the number of participants. We have 309 signatures on waivers, and will pay based on that. The insurance expense is $1.49 per participant. Richard expressed concern that some riders may have declined or forgotten to sign the waiver form, which is important both for insurance coverage and for liability protection of the club and its officers; in future events we will need to be sure that everyone involved in registration carefully checks for signed waivers and communicates that signing a waiver is a strict condition of participation. Some riders may object, but their option is to not participate.

Richard has been in regular communication with Dan Harshberger, who was injured on the bRamble ride, regarding the insurance coverage. Dan was worried about whether squabbles over insurance responsibility would make it difficult for him to receive coverage from either our insurance or his personal insurance, but Richard has communicated with both insurance companies and ascertained that this will not be a problem because the club insurance is explicitly a secondary insurance policy, covering only what is not covered by a personal insurance policy. Richard has also been helping Jon Davis, injured on an earlier GEARS ride, regarding insurance coverage. He has communicated with Greg Lee, also injured in the earlier ride, but has not had a recent report of Greg’s progress.

There was some discussion about making sure riders on all club rides sign liability waivers, and communicating clearly that insurance coverage is available only to members and first-time invited guests (thus, not to persons who attend GEARS rides regularly without becoming members). Misgivings were expressed about whether we should even mention that riders might be covered by club insurance. As Gary mentioned, this has not always been the case; people injured on club rides in prior years have relied only on their own insurance and resources, and others mentioned that one does not typically expect that participating in a club ride provides insurance coverage for the individual. The primary purpose of our insurance policy is to protect the club and its board from liability, and a secondary but nice benefit is that in some cases it can help with extraordinary expenses of a club member. The issue of the appropriate coverage for individual injuries, and communication to riders regarding that coverage, was not fully resolved before it was necessary to move to other topics on the agenda.

Action Items:
5) Volunteer Appreciation Picnic? Schedule?
There was a long and lively discussion of options for expressing appreciation of bRamble and Jamboree volunteers. Prior email discussions have centered on a possible picnic at Orchard Point, and the club covering registration for the Yaquina Lighthouse Century or possibly for a club subsidy of registrations for other centuries in Oregon.

Gary expressed his view that Orchard Point is too far from Eugene, leading most people to either drive automobiles or not attend. Also, two of the dates that have been considered conflict with annual club rides (an overnight trip to the coast, and Aufderheide). Gary also feels that recognition should be varied depending on the level of volunteer effort, and said that he has heard complaints before from people who expended a great deal of effort but received only the same recognition as those who did less.

It was noted that in the past we have typically had a pizza party. Last year only 12 people attended the volunteer party, although attendance at some prior year volunteer parties has been larger. Jay asked the total number of volunteers, and Jim responded that it was around 50. Jay suggested gift certificates (perhaps $10 or so, to a local bicycle shop or to any business participating in the bike rewards program) as a possible form of individual recognition. Paul suggested a club picnic that would be for all club members, at which volunteers would be recognized. Gary also mentioned recognition in the newsletter, and Jim volunteered to write a short article for the next (September) newsletter.

While the question of how to recognize volunteers was not completely resolved, two specific actions were moved and unanimously approved: Registration for the Yaquina lighthouse century will be reimbursed for the two volunteers who accepted that invitation (the invitation went out to all bRamble volunteers), and we will attempt to schedule and hold a club picnic. Gary volunteered to find a picnic date that does not conflict with club rides (which might be a weekday or an evening after a non-carpool ride) and will propose a location. Gift certificates will be considered for the 2010 bRamble and Jamboree.

6) Leaf Letter – Response Review
Paul reported on responses to the leaf letter from City of Eugene officers. Several councilors have said they want to schedule a work session. The leaf letter was crafted specifically for the City; a different version will be needed for Lane County.

7) Credit on Century Rides for Volunteers
(see above – this was folded into the discussion of volunteer appreciation)

General Meeting 8:00-9:00

Mel Huey and Lana Lindstrom joined the latter part of the meeting.

By-Laws Vote
Revisions to the bylaws have been distributed, discussed, and revised previously through email and online document sharing, and have been discussed also at previous GEARS meetings. Further discussion was solicited, but there were no further comments. A vote of members present was taken, and revisions to the by-laws were unanimously accepted.

9) Blackberry Jamboree/bRamble Review
Jim is still working on the aftermath of the ride. He plans a written summary but does not have it yet. Meanwhile, he has been gathering suggestions and lessons learned, and shared some of them: – We need signs at points in the ride that we consider dangerous. We believe there was once a sign used to mark a sharp turn on Siuslaw Road, but it seems to be lost. – We need to make better projections of food needs for the ride. We were prepared for 300 riders, and got 350, and some riders reported that in addition to registered riders there were others who joined in without registering. We ran short on Gatorade, meat and cheese at Orchard Point and (at the very end) pasta salad at Crow. Two ways we can prevent this in the future:
* We need to communicate actual rider numbers from registration to food stops in time to obtain more food as needed. We also need to have plans for monitoring and restocking as things run low, not just as they run out. Jay made several restocking runs that could have been combined if we had been better at anticipating shortages. Lack of cell phone and radio communications make it particularly difficult to coordinate restocking efficiently, so probably we need more than one person restocking food stops.
* We could use bracelets, similar to the Eugene Celebration, to identify riders. Since the bracelet is visibly present on the rider, it serves better than ride numbers to distinguish those who have registered from others who may join in. (Gary reported that bracelets have been used in the past.)

10) Safety on Rides
Gary reported that we have a problem with unsafe pacelines. He attributes this to ride attendance dominated by fast riders, such that people who are not experienced in paceline riding really have no choice but to join the paceline to keep up; the result is accordion-like motion of the paceline and unannounced slowing. Paul asked whether Gary had a proposal for addressing the problem. There was some discussion of communicating expectations at the beginning of rides, and then a segue to item 12 on ride attendance.

11) Nurturing Volunteers
(this agenda item was effectively merged into the earlier discussion of bRamble volunteer recognition, and since we
were already far behind the meeting schedule, discussion moved immediately to item 12)