June 2018 Board Minutes
San Diego Mountain Biking Association Board Meeting
Wednesday, June 27 , 2018 7:00 - 9:00 PM,
Sutton Home
For information contact: info@SDMBA.com or
Kevin Loomis President
Introductions/Roll Call
Susie Murphy
Don Sutton
Matt Bartelt
Joshua Bonnici
Renee Halsch
Al Allison
Ben Stone
Tim Ingersoll
Siobhan Baloochi
Kevin Loomis
Not present: Jason Showalter, Skii Fleeton, Jose Galaz
Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items (2 mins. limit per individual; must fill out comment card prior to call to order) Opportunity for members of the public to speak to the Board on any subject matter not on tonight’s agenda
Call to Order 7:05 p.m.
Introductions
Consent Agenda
1. Approval Meeting Minutes 05/16/2018
Kevin makes motion to approve May meeting minutes, Josh seconds, unanimously approved
2. Approval May 2018 Financials
Al Allison to figure out a new process to get May financials before board meeting, including a statement of activity/statement of accounts
Old business for next month - approval of May 2018 financials
Make process that is easier for everyone to see them
Al Allison - wants to see YTD profit loss/month profit loss
Link to bank reconciliation - any board member will be able to view at any time
Approve financials for May next meeting. Financials will always be posted the second week of the month.
Budget review will happen in the future
Kevin makes motion to move approval of May financials to next month, Ben seconds, unanimously approved
Old Business
Requests for Continuance on any current Agenda items
Discussion Agenda
Item 1. Budget Review (Al) 10 mins
2018 Actual budget
What would budget look like if we hired for a TC position?
Budget includes Actual YTD actual expenditures and revenue
Without updates that have been gone over between Ben and Al
More of an information item since everything has been updated since the original drafting of this budget
Old annual budget with actual income
Starts January 1 and ends June 15th
Membership is moving along since split on 4/29/2018.
Final quarter budget - paid an extra 3000 bonus from IMBA because we hit a cap over 25,000
2018 revised budget showing TC position/no TC position
Al ran the numbers with projections: whether we hired someone or not
Projections with trails coordinator
Revised budget
Bumped up membership - aiming for 800 people at average $50/apiece
Grants - downsized from $61,000 to $40,000 - did not get the full amount budgeted.
What makes a grant easier to obtain is a project. Lots of projects are pending, but now it is harder to get grants without a project out of the study process
Should still fundraise for Black Mountain
Booth income - merchandise sales - funding from renting booths
Budget is a full year budget, but does not show current income
Numbers are based on being relatively on target with our budget
Some things are going up, some things have been adjusted
What has changed, in summary:
Membership revenue
Booth income
expenditures - line item
Auto expense increases : board voted to approve auto expenses as needed.
Payroll service - bank charges - cc fees - Bookkeeping
Community outreach
Service fees
What is the difference between hiring a trails coordinator with and without new budget?
TC salary at 4 months: $13,320
Revised without trails coordinator - professional fees without trails coordinator $70,000
1. Hire a consultant at sycamore trails/goodan ranch
2. Mount laguna. To get proposal to start NEPA process, we would have to pay similar to what we did at Orosco.
Someone should still be hired for Wooded Hill trail
Capacity to plan trails within corridor to get approval from Forest Service
Need to plan corridor of 50 ft and plan trail/flag. May need someone in Laguna to make adjustments
Professional fees would be more without a trails coordinator
Trails coordinator would get heavy lifting - in house knowledge being built to reduce costs in the future
Will save $26k by hiring someone and spend a bit over $13k. Basically, hiring this person will save $13k.
Orosco could be pushed into 2019 for approval based on reports and volunteer capacity - supervising ranger left so that halted/pushed back things a bit
Comment period/comments and support got over 500 responses. Has cemented this project as something that needs to be done.
Botany/hydrology has been postponed
Sycamore/Goodan ranch and Otay are areas to focus on
Hiring process has been shown to all board members
Hiring committee - Matt, Don, Susie to interview in the next 2 weeks
Tonight - need to approve job description
$30/hour 20 hours a week cannot do exempt until they are full-time
Posting of the job - approve tonight? 2 weeks. On website and facebook page.
Timing is critical - have to enter agreement with mount laguna and sycamore/goodan ranch.
Position is being posted publicly
Job application will go on memberleap, submit resume and contact information. Timeline is 2 weeks, go to hiring committee in order to go through screening.
Interviews start immediately, completed by mid-July.
Board meeting to be held on August 2nd. Only board meeting for August and July
Sept back to regular schedule
Hire date for trails coordinator - as soon as following week after August board meeting
Onboarding/payroll to be completed and agreed upon in August
Tighten up finances before then, should be okay without Al
Meeting TBA for board meeting on August 2nd for location
Job description for TC: has been vetted through professionals. In order to go to 40 hours a week, person needs to bring in $
Top 10 projects to be reported to board on a quarterly basis
Assist in fundraisers through grant writing
$30,000 to programs/projects in first year
Goals for this position/fundraising?
Important thing is to seek out opportunities for funding and projects that make sense
$ for projects that aren’t build-ready
Orosco - outside of REI, biggest projects fundraised for
Action item: put on as a voting item
Kevin makes motion to SDMBA to hire a coordinator for $30 an hour 20 hours a week - to post position on website as well as facebook and for 2 weeks to interview/form a committee
Matt seconds, Ben Obstains
Item 2. Trails Project Coordinator position (15 mins)
See above
Item 3. Membership and marketing update (Kevin) 5 mins
Memberleap - rocky to say the least - the membership portion of it did not work out that well
Database and billing system issues
Velocity X - really great idea, but did not work out that well
Was supposed to take care of these things but did not materialize
Susie has taken a lot of time to try to work with Velocity, but it has not worked out well
Terminate velocity X and stop this month - end it in June
Pay the company, finish this month out
The renewal system that they set up is working somewhat, but does have errors that need to be fixed
Catching a lot of mistakes, ex. Email for tomorrow had an error-0-0
Susie would like to eventually revisit someone to do marketing that is more of a contact creator/sports minded and understands industry and mission. Social media and engagement to drive people to member page
Still 9 steps to sign up to be a member - need to get this in order from join page and after. Losing 70% of people after getting to join page
Keep investing in social media/ads
Get the process fixed: plan
Al helping Susie sign up for authorize.net. Cut down steps and streamline payment process/auto-renewal. Can store CC information
1 or 2 step process to sign up, then could choose level of engagement
Membership renewal needs to be fixed - have a lot of members that need to renew that we need to keep.
Creating a new username and password is confusing for renewing members
This discussion should be committee-focused instead of board-focused.
Membership numbers - since we became SDMBA only, we have collected more than 20k in sdmba dues!
Have not done social media pushes, membership renewal wasn’t working as well as anticipated. Will hit projected goal easily
Trial memberships for trek will expire and campaign will continue before they expire - hopefully good conversion rate when memberships come up for renewal!
Item 4. Mission Statement Committee Report (Tim, Matt)
Press release - summarize in 50 words what the organization is all about. Cut down on about us paragraph to keep it clean and simple.
SDMBA is a volunteer-led, nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing sustainable trail access for mountain biking in San Diego county.
Comments:
Volunteer-driven over volunteer-led
Do we want or need the word advocacy in mission statement? No, volunteers and increasing is advocacy
Don’t want to get too wordy
Maintaining and increasing in the taglines?
Don - a lot of what we do is maintenance
Just look at boilerplate and mission statement now, circle back to these things later on
Need to be an MTB specific organization - Ben - we do not necessarily need a different mission statement with a softer image
Susie - needs something to plug into a grant application, along with a tagline (one short sentence with 7-10 words)
More tagline concepts? Sit with them for a bit. Please look over this and prepare some suggestions/questions/comments
Matt - tagline - last one is the strongest “increasing trail access for MTB since 1994”
Item 5. Trails Committee Report (Don)
Mainly focusing on putting together a database of trails in SD county.
Trailforks has a good database already on all trails
You can download trail maps from the website
Trailforks Features
You can select columns that you would like to download. Can update columns and can download as a csv/spreadsheet
Don has downloaded and put into an excel spreadsheet.
Tool on trailforks to make maps
Map making tool - can make vectorized maps
Issues
Naming of the trails. Named by the uploaders. Issues with trail names being correct
Land manager/region title need to be correct. Title of the trail itself
Some quality control that needs to be done before adoption. Will allow edits to be input.
What would have to happen - Don would have to select trail, go in and edit trail as an admin
Would be difficult to do for every trail
Would be nice to trailforks to be cleaned up in San Diego - many people use it.
Example - pulling out trails that are decommissioned and correctly adding in new trails can be done on Trailforks.
Don is not able to delete trails yet, but can enter trails as unsanctioned. Trail can possibly be taken off the map.
MTB project also needs to be cleaned up - a little easier, more options
TrailForks is run by Brett Hillier - FrontLines MTB from Canada. Please listen to his podcast!
MTB Project - funded by REI, has rock climbing, hiking, skiing apps as well
Both are good for navigation, Trailforks is better to download from and to potentially have as a database in order to have maps made for SD county
Could hand off this database with trail maps, etc.
Kevin - data is not all accurate
We get some small donations through Trailforks!
Questions:
Q1: How easy is it to add back trails? Can people put a tag on it to make sure trail isn’t added back?
A: Trail goes through moderation before it is put in. Ex. Don has to approve requests to approve trail. Will refer to liaisons to make sure trail is legit. Approves about 5 per day.
Will use mapping data at trailheads in the future
Can put up trailforks logo, other logos on the SDMBA website
A lot of riders would appreciate maps like this
Widget for trailforks to embed into website
5 areas of trails: North Coastal, Central coastal foothills, South coastal foothills, Mountains, 1 other area
Use these in the future to compare to public trails maps
Item 6. Sponsorship Committee (Joshua)
Susie and Josh have been working on sponsorship newsletter going out in July - still get emails from the last one.
Outlining projects, asking for donations, saving the dates for Arch Ride.
Trailfest - committee meetings will happen in the future on that.
Full of bike demos, is going to be amazing, 7 companies are doing bike demos
Dates - October 12-14 is the trailfest
Sponsorship spots are full for trailfest. There will be official beer for event
Finalizing details on events/scheduling. Volunteers are needed, ride leads, scavenger hunt. Ask karen for any volunteer opportunities
Susie - has document of membership discounts and promo codes.
File archive is difficult to use - made a board under the forum under communications, including member discounts and promo codes.
Need to get people to the forum! We can lead people there by drawing them to the website. Forum is much easier than file archive.
Hollywood racks, sport RX, Expert Voice, etc. can’t put it on facebook because it is members only. Can we create a landing page without memberleap just for members?
Item 7. Sponsorship Details - Richard Duquette/Bicyclist
Susie - Richard gave us $5000 for a 2-year membership in past years.
New proposal
$6000 - $3000 would go directly to us. $3000 would be given to “Bicyclist” publication that puts out a magazine and has good digital presence.
$3000 allowance to advertise, do podcasts, do online advertising through them.
Action item: enter into contract with Richard Duquette to work with Bicyclist. Kevin makes a motion to approve, Ben seconds, unanimously approved.
Getting name out into magazine, $3000 of name branding. Will help with BWR and Rancho exposure
Item 8. Potential partnership with Belgian Waffle Ride 2019
“BWR”
Rod Simmons has a long relationship with them, Victor Sheldon, Michael Marx - BWR promoter. Jay Isbell Gravel race well attended - 1200 in attendance
$200 ish to participate. Most people buy kits, gear, t shirts, travel around the world to come to ride
Want to do full MTB categories, can work out a structure to split income from that
Canyon is the title sponsor for the next few years
Potential agreements with BWR
Canyon will donate 4 bikes for promotional purposes
all the beer revenue for 3 days
Could offer a membership - buying during the process and can work ongoing fundraiser for SDMBA into advertising
When they do events, they do email blasts they do not tell you the course but they are very entertaining and amusing.
All board members present open to a discussion about more - bring more volunteers to the race. Do it right one year and they will be very excited!
Volunteers and promotion will help. Mountain bike category event - training rides before. Interested in connections with property owners and looking at routes for the course.
Arch Ride/BWR dates
Arch - April 6th
May 5 - BWR. 2 days of expo and then the event - Friday-Sunday
Will give a lot amount of credit, could potentially get free entries
International competition
Arch Ride can be a training ride for BWR
Item 9. Arch Ride 2019 proposal
Matt talked to Ed, we have a go ahead for half Arch ride.
Will be in Sundevil parking lot by high school at Black Mountain - will be a hard uphill at the start of the ride.
Half arch ride
just over 20 miles. 6.5 are black mountain including new trails, through Manzanita, Lilac, join up at Black Mountain aid station.
Susie - consider adding a 4th aid station in PQ? Ben - no, but maybe emergency services and water/food - small station
20 mile ride would be good with a small aid station
Would sell at least another 250 riders and potentially get the whole facility at Green Flash to fill the entire space. More food stations, more stations, more booths.
Start time - 1.5 to 2 hours later than original start time
Potential to make another 20k than what we make currently
Do not have to increase county permit, no road crossings.
Aid station at black mountain will still be in place
Potentially allowing runners to go early?
Item 10. Action Item: Adjustment in bookkeeper fees
$1000 donation of services for sponsorship listing
$1000 for back services
$500/month for remainder of 2018 (15 hrs/month)
Carol has invested over 70 hours of what she had originially been billed for to work on memberleap
$2000 of extra time to get books connected to memberleap, to get taxes automated
Has given us notice of 6-7 months that she wants to donate $1000 of services to platinum level
Al and Susie - Carol has done a lot of work, she did not let us know as far in advance as requested. Communication issue.
A lot of things to do to transition over, her work was undervalued.
Kevin - this person is donating a lot of her time and doing something that is working out for us.
Carol needs to communicate better, notify us of any other changes.
Will need to send us an invoice every month potentially with actual hours - Scott and Al. Getting quickbooks online, etc.
Susie - tried to make sure that Al and she are always together on communication
Action item: Kevin - makes a motion to pay Carol for bookkeeping services - increase amount for remainder of month, Ben seconds, unanimously approved
1000 for in kind donation and put into sponsorship package as member
Item 11. Action item: timber bell reorder quantity 20 $200.00
Josh makes a motion to approve $200 for Timber bells, Don seconds. Unanimously approved.
Item 12. Action Item: SDMBA Hat reorder quantity 24 $340.00
Kevin makes a motion to approve $340 for hates, Josh seconds, unanimously approved.
Item 13. Action item: SDMBA Canari Jersey/apparel order $1000
Susie - Canari store is open and will remain open - can go on site to shop and go to Canari website to order.
Blue sdmba apparel in the last month has sold 1100 or 1200 of merch. Closed cycle out and will open again after the first round
Red Vip - at least 11 were ordered for VIP members
Susie ordered 1000 of blue apparel jerseys/shorts to sell at events
Action item: Matt makes a motion to approve $1000 for jerseys/apparel, Al seconds, unanimously approved.
Item 14. Action Item: Budget for Mount Laguna Trail Fest expenses $12,000
Kevin and Susie -
Food, merchandise to sell and get money back, scavenger hunt items.
Signage to reuse, get items printed, port a potties, trash cans
Action item: Josh makes a motion to approve budget for Mount Laguna Trail Fest. Renee seconds. Unanimously approved.
Mount Laguna trails project - conversation with Lindsay.
Talk about project more generally.
Endurance runners offered 10,000 for new signage.
Forest service project, we are helping to restore trail.
Item 15. Action item: SDMBA Patches $500
Embroidered patches you can sew on
Action item: Ben makes a motion to approve $500 for SDMBA patches, matt seconds, unanimously approved.
Updates - (Non Discussion Items)
Item 1. Laguna Event Oct. 12-14, 2018 - four planning meetings held
Item 2.
Items for next meeting Agenda
Approval May 2018 Financials (from Consent Agena)
Board member communications
Item 1. Upcoming events - 2-3 board members at each needed
June 30 Bike Giveaway at Zumwalt’s
4 - 6 p.m. Saturday giving bike away at 5.
Pizza and beer, medium bike. Todd is providing food.
10% given back to folks way say “I support SDMBA”.
July 13 Meet and Greet at CalBike La Jolla 5 -7 p.m.
Henty hydration pack
will provide wine beer and snacks
July 14 VIP Event “Ride with the President” Hodges 8 am - noon
vip members only
Not on the calendar. Sunset staging area.
Item 2. Advocacy meeting ideas:
4 meetings offsite per year
If we schedule social rides/events a year in advance, we should get a good turnout
4 offsite meetings would also be scheduled approximately a year in advance
8 meetings per year, social rides additional
Approximately 20 people normally show up to advocacy meetings, things are getting somewhat state
July and December are difficult months to draw people
Quarterly
Adjournment
Meeting ends at 9:30 PM
Next Meeting: August 2, 2018
Meeting Minutes Recorded by: Siobhan Baloochi, SDMBA Secretary