September 2024 Board Meeting Minutes and Activity Reports

MORE – Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

September 9, 2024

Virtually present at meeting

Casey Anderson – President

Jali Fernando – Executive Secretary

David Beugelmans - Secretary

Kathy Mihm – Ride Programs Director

Dave Magill - MD Advocacy Director

Rob Lowe – Membership Director

Neil Blake – Treasurer

Michael Ullmann – VA Advocacy Director

Guest: Rick Dotson

• Executive Director Report (Jali)
  • Jali
    • MoCo Epic
      • We are chugging along and we are in good shape
      • Right now we are making sure we have enough volunteers. We may be a little short of course marking and demarking. Some of our 70 milers are now testing the 100 mile route. Everything else I am not worried about.
    • Membership Discussion Follow-Up (Jali)
      • FPVSP
        • Wrapped up at the end of August. Had 43 people go for the join member, and 23 of those people are completely new to MORE.
        • Not so great news is FPVSP had a database glitch where they can’t download addresses. They are manually collecting addresses and it is holding things up slightly.
        • Will start on renewals.
        • FPVSP got over 100 joins and there is a quite a bit of overlap with MORE membership.
      • Events
        • Had 35 people joint and renew through the MoCo Epic. Good we are getting through the MoCo Epic. Also got members through the Locust Shade event.
      • Met with Filipino mountain bike group and received mixed feedback.
        • Have members who want to ride (maybe 1-2 hours available a week) and don’t want any other involvement. So don’t perceive value of MORE
        • Then there are folks who want to get involved. Found at least a few interested in becoming liaisons.
      • Put together membership ideas from Jali’s powerpoint into a spreadsheet and sent to everyone.
        • Casey: Working on a survey.
      • Strategic Planning (Jali)
        • Would like us to set a date for early next year for a strategic planning retreat and an evaluation of this year.
        • Have a better idea of responsibilities and want to talk about that, and maybe what we could use additional staff for.
      • IMBA Leadership Summit (Jali)
        • Attended in Knoxville
        • Talk about developing a donor program. This was timely because Rob reached out that we had some pretty big donors joining and donating through their membership.
        • Don’t remember when I was onboarded was given list of donors, but don’t know if anyone was actively reaching out to people.
          • Dave M: We should see who are top 10 or so donors are then have a plan to reach out to them initially through electronic means and offer a face to face meeting/call.
        • Doing more with membership CRM
          • Brought this up and made a case for being able to more with the platform.
          • Dave M: At next IMBA meeting, the head of IT should come to the event.
          • Jali: I know they outsource most of it.
• Financial Update (Neil)
• $15k Net general
• $22.5k General revenues
• $12.6k MoCo Epic
• $6.7k Memberships
• $1.9k MORE Store (some of this is probably for trails but I haven't gone through the website activity yet)
• $0.9k Interest (waiting for the interest credit from FCB)
• $0.5k Other general
• $7.5k General expenses
• $6.5k ED cost
• $0.5k Website/IT costs
• $0.5k other
• -10.8k Net Restricted decrease
• $8.3k Restricted Revenues
• $5.8k sMOREs Eastern Shore - grant received
• $2.5k Check from Bike Lane - W@W
• $19.1k Restricted Expenses
• $9.8k Locust Shade (Jump Line)
• $3.5k sMORE Eastern Shore (Trek bikes for raffle)
• $3.3k Gunpowder Falls
• $2.4k West MoCo (Seneca Creek bridge repair)
• $0.1k other
• Jali
• Regarding REI grant, REI shifted in that the locals can’t pick their beneficiaries anymore. They are encouraging us to submit an application for a grant in the spring and then they will give REI national a heads up. It’s not going to be as direct incoming years.
• Neil
• Are there any other organizations like REI that give large donations. Corporate sponsorships are a total separate realm.
• Jali: The issue is a lot of the money is for trail ready/specific projects, not general donations.
• Membership Update (Rob)
• For August, we had an awesome month due the FPVSP and MoCo Epic
• Exceeded 2023 and 2022 best numbers by a substantial amount.
• Lagged a bit in renewals.
• We may be struggling a bit due to donations related to national/local elections.
• We are currently at 1934 members.
• Only $400 behind previous year, so doing very well for where we are, other than our total membership numbers. Still not near where we started the year and our peak of 2100 members. Hopefully between MoCo memberships ramping up and membership drive next month, we will have a big recovery period.
• Had 30 new joining members in August.
• Trails
• Virginia (Michael)
• Rick
• Still working connector through Fairfax Water and state/federal representation, and county elected officials
• Has moved connector into committee at Fairfax Water. Need help from county supervisors to get it to go early.
• Met with my delegate, who is on an outdoors recreation committee. There is no funding for trails, although other areas got funding, other than Northern Virginia. His proposal is to do a feasibility study through, which could be a substantial commitment. Would be better off if we had matching funds from the federal government and county.
• Hoping to get money from earmark in federal budget. Says this is a perfectly acceptable for an earmark. Talked to Ernie, who is going to set up a meeting with folks to go over the earmark and see where we are.
• Still have good support from county supervisors.
• One of the reasons the feasibility study will work well is it will create an agreed to path. Then can work with the park authority using the defined plan.
• Next Step: Need to create a map. Was talking to Jali. Wants a map of entire trail from one end to the other. Hoping to work with Kathy on this.
• Kathy: Just need GPX tracks and can do it.
• IMBA Trail Counter Grant
• Locust Shade is involved
• Locust Shade Jump Fest is coming up on Sunday
• A few people are pushing to get this ready. There are 100 people signed up.
• Get a lot of random emails from people, with complaints, nice messages, etc.
• Lots of people reach out to me from Loudon County.
• Hit a dead end with the Freedom Trails
• Maryland (Dave)
• Had a great call with someone in Calvert County.
• County is very long and thin and split between Southern Maryland Mountain Bikers (which is an IMBA chapter) and the north, which is our territory.
• They are building trail out there and they have a lot of land. Excited about the idea that we may have another representative. More to come on this.
• New trail for Little Bennet is done and officially opens soon
• Last month mentioned how slow process has been for LBI grant and speculated they were trying to slow them down. I was wrong – they have indicated they are working on a new system to make things much better. Think about how to advance this every day.
• Jali helped out with IMBA trail grant application. Decided to put in one application for MD and one for VA. Hashawa has put in the application for MD. Need to update 20 miles of trails. Need County to understand that there is an interest in this. Could lead to $500,000 grant.
• General Trails Fund had $25k transfer in June, and opening it up let people who previously applied to apply again at a 50/50 match rate. One person is interested in VA.
• Two big DNR events coming up. DNR has an employee field day in Rosaryville. Reaching the people on the ground who need to decide on trail projects is important. There is also an outdoor recreation summit in Rocky Gap, and we have been invited. Casey and Dave M. will split the time to represent MORE at the event.
• Generated some new t-shirts to advertise new trails in Montgomery County.
• Working with volunteers to clean up and clear trails before MoCo Epic.
• Ride Program Update (Kathy)
• Same old, with lots of rides happening
• Spoke to someone at Rivers Edge, and wants to start a mountain biking club