We had our first Board meeting on Friday, 1/23.

Because we have a lot of new Board members, we discussed how to have a Board meeting, and our specific duties.  We're ready to roll up our sleeves, and we will be meeting monthly and posting here the topics of discussion and how we voted.

A couple of announcements, which may have already been posted:

Rudy has been dropped as a sponsor.  

We can get POC and Giro Helmets through the Club's store sponsor Redbeard.

The end of year vote to reincorporate passed.  Reincorporation is a prerequisite to achieving charitable status, which opens many new fundraising opportunities for the Club and the broader NYC cycling scene.

We discussed the Peaks Coaching plan which has been announced on our site. 

This is a great opportunity at a great price.  If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that here:

https://kissenacycling.wufoo.com/forms/peaks-coaching-feb-15-through-april-15/

Please post any questions you have in the Peaks Coaching thread.

You do need to be an active Member in order to take advantage of the great Club benefits and sponsors, including the Peaks Coaching plan, discounts through Readbeard , Giant, OSMO, and purchasing new kit.  

Because not everyone has yet renewed their Membership for 2015, please click on the link to renew:

https://kissenacycling.wufoo.com/forms/kcc-membership-2015-application-waiver/

We're looking forward to a great racing season.

mattie davitt said:

Bump question for fees. When checking out for annual membership, I get tagged for $100. Does $50 get charged back after the fact?

Hello all,

We had our first Board meeting of 2014 this week and I wanted to share some of what we discussed with you.

Attending were:

Jules Roazen - President

David Stokes - Vice President

Jeff White - Membership

David Yang - Tresurer

Todd McLoughlin - Secretary

Eric Ragot - Development Director

Erika Tarte - At Large

Joaquin C de Baca - At Large

Kayt Mathers - At Large

Brendan Rigby - At Large

Charlie I (Race director) & Craig Z (Sponsorship) were unable to attend.

We did a brief review of the Board positions & responsibilities, and ratified the minutes from the final meeting of 2013.

Finances: Yang made a presentation of the finances of the club, based on expected renewals and expenses for the year.

The club has only one source of income which is membership dues (we do also get a small amount of cash and some in-kind benefits from some sponsors) and five broad categories of expense:

1. Forum & related - we pay for a hosted Vanilla form, and the website, domains, wufoo online ordering, etc
   
2. Mentor program (the club pays mentors in cash, deferred dues and Champsys kit)
   
3. "Elite" rider retention (Rudy project helmets & glasses for Cat 3+ riders)
   
4. Parties (mid and end of year)
   
5. Miscellaneous expenses like buying a team tent, or purchasing spots on "club row" at big CX races
   

Membership: Enrollment in 2014 was 138 members.  Jeff anticipates "meeting or beating" that for 2014, based on expected renewals and our New Member pipeline.  Kit design changes are underway for 2014, which are minor (no more "KCC50") but a pre-requisite to our next order.

Jeff has committed to publishing a year-long schedule of clothing orders & new member rides by the end of January.

Ride Clean: NYSBRA's anti-doping solution is a fund that can be contributed to, which in turn pays USAC to conduct State-Wide anti-doping "as they see fit."  We discussed some possible fundraising ideas.

In 2013 and prior years Board members were exempted from paying dues; we voted to repeal that in 2014.

Mentoring: Eric presented the outline for a Women's racing program, led by Dale Suttle; the board approved funding for this program.  Open solicitation for mentoring proposals will begin shortly.  The board tabled discussion of specific mentoring budget hoping to see an increase in membership by our next meeting.

We also discussed converting two of the Board's "At Large" positions to "Technology" and "Public Relations" respectively.

As always, if you have questions about how the club is run, or suggestions to make it better please don't hesitate to contact one of your Board members, or post here.

Happy riding,

Jules

Jeff Owens said:

Maybe a monetary breakdown of how much cash mentors get, cost of forum, how much is spent on Rudy project, etc?

There has not been a board meeting report on this thread since 2015. Here is an effort to correct this. Last year’s board did a lot of work and the current board is on track to do the same. Here is an overview of the board meetings on February 10th and March 25th.

Membership

Membership renewal is lagging this time last year. We currently have 35 paid members. We expect more renewals as the weather improves. Our first Meet Kissena ride is scheduled for April 1st. Other rides will be scheduled every three weeks or so. 

Encouraging rider engagement and retention were discussed

Treasurer

Currently in a solid financial position but we are being conservative with expenses given that membership has decreased over the past several years. 

Sponsorship

Efforts are being made to get new sponsorship including ConEd.

POC helmet subsidy is popular and should be promoted, however we are reducing subsidy to$25 for Cat 45 and $45 for Cat 123 

Development

Explored options of a racing camp with Tim Cusick and Scott Moninger. Gauged member interest. There was not sufficient interest so camp was scrapped, but weekend away has enough interest to setup. Announcement will be forthcoming. 

Road bikes at Velodrome day was successful. Looking to get more member engagement in clinics as well as group rides. 

Tech 

Discussion of ways to save costs on tech that club uses. Alternatives will be explored and tested prior to making decisions that affect members. 

Other

Victor Chan will continue to be hired to take race photos for the club that are available to all members at no extra cost

The Spring Series was close to being revived this year by Myles Romanow with the support of Kissena. In the end, factors kept this from happening. Board considered partnering with CRCA to help preserve this series in the future. 

--

Feel free to reach out to board members if you have questions about any of the above

@MaxThorn

Thanks for asking. Happy to answer questions. Most of your questions related to trying to provide useful benefits to membership while being fiscally prudent. 

First ConEd - they make the Watts? (couldn’t help myself) Sean is following up on a lead that came up last year. Sponsors provide club with money and or goods. ConEd would be money.

Tech: I edited the tech statement to be clearer. Essentially we are simply looking at current use of tech (which one of our larger expenses) and seeing if there are better and more economical alternatives out there. Vanilla forums costs the club around $2000 a year. 

POC: Your question prompted me to go back and find the original posts on the forum about POC and noted that the purpose of the 123 discount was rider retention. The Octal MIPS was $169 for Cat 45 and $85 for Cat 123. We are going to look at the subsidy once more before finalizing it. 

Does that clarify things?

The Kissena board had a meeting on June 8th and I had planned on posting minutes but did not get around to it. I had started writing the minutes but decided that they needed some context to be understood. Everything else that happened in June put that on hold… until now.

This post ends up being a little more like a “state of the club” message rather than minutes. There are two issues where we could use member help, so please contact one of us if you are able to help. 

First, a little context. Several years back, the club was over a 100 members strong and had two cash sponsors providing the club with $2500 each. We are currently at around 50 members and haven’t had cash sponsors since 2016. The club doesn’t have the kind of resources that we did a few years ago, but is in sound financial shape and projected to remain so throughout the year.

Our largest expense has been coaching which in prior years was heavily subsided by the club. Last year the board decided that it was no longer sustainable to have the club pay the majority of the bill for a service that was used by a small group of members. Our solution was to increase dues and make coaching freely available to all members. We believed that affordable coaching would be a valuable benefit for current as well as for recruiting new members. We understood that not everyone would be comfortable with this decision and have always planned to reassess it. We will seek member input later this year and will reevaluate whether this benefit and its associated costs warrant keeping it. Note that we renegotiated the costs of coaching, helped in part because the current plan is less time intensive to maintain.

While there continues to be an active core membership, there has been a decrease in total membership since last year of about 25 members. Current membership is 48 members. The majority of the members who did not renew were less engaged with group rides and racing and may have been put off by the increase in dues. The club continues to offer new member rides and new members have joined but not as many as have left. 

Finding a new sponsor has been another priority this year. The ConEd sponsorship was not a good match. Our current plan is to seek a local eatery like a coffee shop looking for increased exposure. We are working with Charlie Issendorf to provide a local sponsor with greater visibility and value by sponsoring the club as well as a park race jersey. I think a coffee shop would be ideal because they would get exposure through the club, at park races, and we could guarantee them paying customers after each race. If any members know of coffee shops or other eateries that my be a good fit or want to help the board approach potential sponsors please reach out to Sean Miles or one of the other board members. 

The other significant expense for the club is the forum software. Before he died, Phil Ginsberg was spearheading a plan to transition from Vanilla forums to Discourse. There were several benefits for doing so including more modern features like a dedicated phone app and saving the club around $1800 a year. He had done a great deal of research and prep work but did before completing the work. We hope to be able to find someone to continue the work he started. In the coming weeks we will need to find a member to become technology director. If you think you might be able to help please reach out to a board member to find out more about the position. 

A couple of random notes from the meeting:

• The crit clinic run by JP and Dale was well attended. 
• A Cyclocross clinic will be planned for August.
• The weekend away in the Catskills was a success despite the mixed weather. The riding was great and the the house and food were affordable. The club will consider making it a regular event.
• The recent POC helmet order was popular and the club subsidized $700 in helmet costs. 
• We will pursue the dark Jersey/jacket design recently discussed on the forum
• A CX sock design is being explored.