The all-volunteer CRCA Board held its first meeting of 2019 on January 17th. Minutes from that meeting, in draft form pending ratification by the full Board as part of the next meeting, follow below. If you have any questions or concerns about meeting minutes please reach out to Clay Jones, Secretary, or any CRCA Board Member.

JAN: Thursday, January 17, 2019, 6PM-9PM

In-person Meeting

In-Person Attendance: Lucia, Tara, Randy, Matt, Dan, Kevin, Clay, Sean, Tony. Via Telephone: Ken & Jeff

President

• Welcome and Intros

• Board voted to appoint Matt Vandivort to fill vacancy as Director of Open Racing

• Distributed and explained Non-profit Board of Directors Guidance materials

• Distributed and explained Board & Key Personnel Conflict of Interest Policy & Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form, which will be required of all Board Members and Key Persons

• Discussed Importance of Inclusivity and creation of Anti-harassment policy

• Discussed Intra-Board Communication options and feedback: slack/e-mail/trello/txt

Open Racing

• In the past Open Race profits covered costs for club race, coaching etc

  • Past year had worry around end of year costs for substitute marshals, but just squeaked by

• This year, looking at potential deficit

  • USAC fee increase

  • Potential additional $10k needed for race directors

• Open Race Committee - proposal to improve operations and hopefully use Open Racing as a training ground for future CRCA Board Members

  • Looking to hire directors - this is the only way to make Open Racing in its current form sustainable after many additions to the calendar and more complex logistics over the past 5-10 years.

    • $2,000 per race estimated for non-CP races due to more complex permitting, full day schedule, etc. Non-CP race directors will need to be trained (at Grant’s Tomb?) and handle full run of the day leadership.

    • Smaller amount to be determined to be allocated to the Central Park races given less complexity, shorter duration, etc.

  • Current/possible candidates

    • Grant's Tomb - Liz Marcello

    • Orchard Beach - Alvaro Soltero and Jonathan Trevett

    • Bear Mt - Travis Burkel

    • Still need people for 3 other open CP races - will put out an open call for interested parties, with an eye toward pulling for different portions of the club

  • In the future, we can consider different compensation structures to insure we are not burdening the economics of the Open Races and can keep the calendar active.

• Open race registration

  • Consider adding a few more $ to reg costs to offset fees we incur - increased USAC rider and event costs will hit CRCA by perhaps $2,000 in 2019.

    • Potentially just for later registrants, want to keep early registration as affordable as possible (while also accounting for the increased fixed costs of the events)

  • Have convo with BikeReg to negotiate fees/look at sponsorship

    • USAC registration can provide significant savings versus Bikereg

    • If that doesn’t pan out, then plan to vote on increasing fees

Club racing

• Kevin engaging in pre-season convos w/transition with Julius

  • Finalizing vehicle master list

    • Need moto list & Tom Main’s vehicle info

  • Need to finalize contracts with Parks

• Need someone to take over Boyd Cup calculations. Some options:

  • Tom Mains. Cost? Filtering out non-club members from open races

  • See if Road Results can autocalculate similar to Cross Results

• Vehicle to drive cones & supplies around

  • Sergio done in the past, but with new job, may not be able to commit (he owns van)

    • Check with him first to see if he knows anyone that can replace him w/appropriate size vehicle

  • Reach out to Parks to see if they have vehicle we could use

  • Check with members if Sergio doesn’t have contact of his own

  • Need to ensure we can secure permits

    • Check if permits are tied to specific vehicle vs person

• Look into leader’s jerseys

Marshal

• Populating earlier races in season with fewer/closer to minimum requirements to ensure we have more for later races

• 1st club race full; Some of GT full

• Prepare for Paulette’s absence to keep operations smooth

• Consider early season communications about why Marshaling is important

  • Include drop off rates, etc

Rider Dev

• New Member orientation 2/20 (tentative)

• Working on permits

• Race clinics. Usually early April & Early June

  • 4/6 & 6/16 (Father’s Day)?

  • Thinking men’s in April & women’s in June

  • Will need some teams for team duty for these clinics

• Women’s Dev Series

  • 4/5 field

  • Keep as Open Race

  • Mim will still be helping

  • Yaakov coming back as sponsor

  • Haven’t confirmed Specialized sponsorship yet. Need to identify new contact

PR/Sponsorships

• Lucarelli coming back for Club Series

• Grant’s Tomb

  • Roka still on (part of 2 year contract)

  • Trying to get Rapha

  • Race numbers

    • Need to be submitted to print within 2 weeks

    • Jeff going to work with sponsors to confirm

• Orchard Beach

  • Negotiating with Blue Ribbon

• Bear Mountain

  • Working with Jameson Capital (as anchor sponsor)

  • Then looking at a couple others to support

• Sea Sucker

  • Interested in sponsoring programs that help bring people into bike racing

• Working on recruiting Donor Numbers

Teams

• Updates made to website (team names, rosters)

• Sent email to team managers for call for rosters - good response so far

• Work on delegating communication through teams

• NYCC agreed to do check in

• Number pickup - reached out to Etsu. Waiting to hear back

  • Look at 2nd pickup in Brooklyn

• Look into Brooklyn outreach

Membership

• Number distro

  • Look at 2/28 for first event

  • 1 day at Veselka, 1 in BK, 1st race, and then another pickup in Manhattan

  • Maybe have at Grant’s

  • Randy looking into ways to keep stacks of numbers in multiple locations & have numbers assigned on the spot when member picks up

• Recruiting

  • Will put out email from Comms for last year’s members that haven’t signed up yet

  • Randy to write email from Membership Director to people that haven’t returned in 2+ years

  • Looking at cycling events/not races to spread awareness

  • Attend NYCC monthly meeting when they talk about CRCA

  • Lucia to forward opportunities she receives (e.g., GFNY)

  • New teams, but established outside of CRCA

    • Already have kits ordered for the year

    • Look at CRCA patches or heat transfer for their first year. CRCA would provide free

      • Matt to look into cost for patches

      • Sean to talk to the vendor Rapha used for heat transfer

  • Look at Bear Mt as opp to invite non-racers and drive enrollment. Food, tent, etc?

• Racing Membership

  • Keep this year, but think about removing for next year

  • Small percentage of members. Hard to operationalize payments at each race

• Website/backend

  • Randy working to future-proof in case future boards’ don’t have tech-savvy members who can jump into

• Automated functions

  • Randy built out and previously ran, but this year plans to delegate to appropriate board member/task owner

• Working on Marshal check in

• Waiver upload process much better last year

• Look into way to utilize waiver across race series and coaching sessions/clinics

• Mailchimp integration

  • Randy to work on automating email lists from membership database

• Randy to collect copy from automated emails & share with board members to review to ensure clarity

• Proposing buying 3 ipads for club use. 1 with data connection the others can tether to

  • Can use for check in at races as well as other events where we may need to collect info, etc

  • Board voted to approve purchase

Communications

• Channels

  • Move toward using email to communicate with members

    • Build group of individuals that want to hear from us

  • Re-evaluating reason for being in each channel and will determine best ways to reach all members

Treasurer

• Moved some funds into interest-bearing accounts

  • CDs & Money market accts

• Process of closing books on 2018

• Integrating Quickbooks so will be able to provide reports and easier to handoff in the future

Secretary

• In-person meetings

  • First 3 (Jan-March)

  • 1x quarter after that

• Feb

  • in-person 2nd or 3rd week

  • Call to check in week leading up to first race

• Doodle 2-3 weeks out in advance

• Agenda: Automated newsletter goes out on Thursdays. So Tuesday week before board meetings is target for final agenda