Re: RUSA BOD election candidate statement to SFR: Dave Thompson
Mike Sturgill
In my last message, I asked you to vote in the current RUSA BoD election. I also recommended Dave Thompson and Misha Heller for the 2 open positions. Rob Hawks (SF RBA) asked the candidates for a more detailed statement. Below is a detailed statement that Dave sent to Rob. Please read it over.
Thanks,
-Mike
Below is the message Dave Thompson composed to send to SFR that expands upon the online statement and the interview he gave to Deb Banks for the election.
Please read the info below, but here are some comments from me. I served for several years on the board along with Dave and found him to be quite open to hearing the perspective from SFR, one of RUSA's largest regions. Dave put in enormous amounts of time supporting RUSA in a variety of ways and always made time to listen. Many of you will have noticed that I too am running for the Board for the position of RBA Liaison, a position I've held for the last 3 years. This year I am running unopposed and expect to serve one last year for RUSA in this position for 2024. I would be happy to work alongside Dave once again should he be elected. I think it is significant that he is the first and so far only candidate to respond to the request to write to SFR.
rob===============================================================
There's a lot here. Comments welcome.
The RUSA Board election is underway and I’m looking for your support. Here is more detail on my background, qualifications and plans.
Education and Business Experience – computer science and MBA. Business experience - delivering benefits administration services to large corporations – managing multi million $ client relationships but, and this is important in that environment, listening to and solving problems for corporations, all the way to individual personal issues – that’s the nature of pension and health benefits. I managed large client relationships and managed others doing the same thing. I have a lot of experience managing and working with people at all levels.
Pre RUSA Board - I retired some time ago. We live in Florida but prior to that in the Philadelphia area and prior to that in Ontario. I’ve occupied my time riding my bike and working in volunteer organizations – trustees for the local roads board by our cottage (think road maintenance etc) and, for the past 14 years, heavily involved in our sport. That started with taking on Treasurer and ride organizing responsibilities for Randonneurs Ontario in 2013, close to our summer cottage. After riding the inaugural Granite Anvil in 2009, I managed the 3 x 1200k Granite Anvil events in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
I built on the success and experience with the Granite Anvil and developed the Florida Sunshine 1200k that was run in 2015 and 2019. I have assisted other 1200k ride organizers in the US in various capacities since then. In the Fall of 2016, I ran for the RUSA Board and became Treasurer in 2017.
RUSA Board - As Treasurer, I built on the good work of Susan Otcenas, my predecessor, doing more to standardize bookkeeping and reporting to the RUSA Board. I put sales tax reporting in place in CA and FL and handle our IRS tax reporting.
It was a natural extension to take over the RUSA Store, rearranging responsibilities, cleaning out old stock to focus on our core needs. There’s always work to do with the Store – ordering stock, answering member questions etc. When you send an email to souv...@rusa.org … that’s me. I triage any issues so that we don’t step on one another and get you answers as quickly as possible. I really enjoy providing personal service to members.
We had a tough time, financially speaking and insurance-wise, with the lawsuit and we had continual problems with our insurance coverage, not to mention the pandemic. We made it through all that; we’re in great financial shape and I established a long term relationship with an insurer. That relationship is as important to me as the large client relationships that I had when I was gainfully employed :). RUSA’s very existence depends on having insurance.
I took over as President for 2020-2022. There were Board member changes during that time – things are always changing in a volunteer organization – but with the help of many others, we made a lot of progress. We needed to make changes to our Perms program and I was in the middle of that, satisfying insurance needs as well as adding flexibility for route designers and riders. During the period where we weren’t running rides, I reviewed hundreds of perm routes and still review routes being reactivated. We have an ongoing team supporting the perms program – Crista Borras, Kerin Huber and myself – along with help from the Web Team, of course.
One of the benefits of the Perms initiative was the implementation of Smartwaiver. No off-the-shelf product is perfect but we have extended its use to regions of all sizes. Mike Sturgill of AZ has helped immensely with getting Regions up and running.
Another Board initiative in 2017 was Electronic Proof of Passage. Nigel Greene came on the Board at the same time as me and was a key proponent. With the pandemic, I discussed EPP with ACP and got approval to extend that to ACP events and, by extension, to RUSA events. Whether GPS tracks or photos, we entered a new world – keeping our tradition of brevet cards for those who wish to use them, and moving forward with technology.
What Next? - That’s some of the past and present – where do we go from here?
The lawsuit, insurance and pandemic derailed many things that we could have done in the past few years but we did make major progress. I’d like to continue the work at the Board level.
Membership is both our biggest asset as well as our biggest challenge. We have incredible, largely untapped talent in our membership. We are communicating better – with the Between Controls e-newsletter initiative of Dawn Piech – but we still focus too much on Board Members doing the work. With the pandemic and PBP behind us, it’s time to sit down with the RBAs and find those people, create working groups to offload work. Your Board is tied up doing work and not spending enough time listening to RBAs and membership.
I feel that I’m very good at building teams – we have an Insurance Team, a Permanents Team , a Store team – but there’s much more to be done.
Our turnover is huge – questions need to be asked:
-- How did you find out about Randonneuring?
-- What attracted you to the Sport?
-- Why have you stayed?
-- Why are you leaving?
-- In what way didn’t we meet your expectations?
-- What do you want/need from your RBA, your Board?
Some regions have reached critical mass in their geographical area; many others struggle with a core group, a handful of riders. Randonneuring is an unknown. We need to increase awareness – RUSA is the only game in town but we need to get the word out. There are other national organizations – League of American Bicyclists and USA Cycling, for example. We need to build bridges to them. There are large regional events where we could have a presence. These things take time and, in some cases, money, but they have payback. In our membership we have people who are good at this, who may already participate in these organization. I’d like to meet with groups of RBAs and find these people. In my experience there are many who would like to help; we just need to ask and then followup and make it happen – not making it a Board “doing” responsibility. The Board is only 7 individuals; it cannot come up with all the good ideas or execute on them.
Gravel is the next major push for events and permanents. The web team has setup the technology and members are submitting routes. The next couple of years will get us firmly into the gravel world for those interested, providing another option for our riders and another way of increasing awareness.
Technology support is key. We need to do more to support our RBAs and, by extension, our riders. Right now there’s very little commonality among regions. There could be more. RUSA needs to provide a suite of options for the RBAs, not forcing any given approach. We’ll only get there by tapping into what RBAs are already doing and standardizing where possible and useful. The Board’s involvement should be to facilitate establishing those working groups, not doing the work. That will take advantage of our volunteer talent base.