Board Meeting Minutes, March 2019

April 22, 2019 by Cara "Color Hawk" Combs

Lawrence Trail Hawk March Meeting

In attendance: President Cara Combs, Web Master Jeff Triplett, Treasure Josh McVey, Membership Chair Caroline Wroczynski, Vice President Lisa Ball, Bruce Miller, Ami Weidler-Hyten, Tamara McEwen, Bill Loats, Megan Moriarty and Secretary Kara Protasio

President Cara Combs called the meeting to order at 7:06 p.m.

Financial Report-Josh

Josh turned in our taxes for the club. Race directors need to let Josh know if we are selling extra swag so he can categorize it differently for taxes.

In order to keep track of everything need for our taxes, Josh needs to track things different. He recommended that we use Quickbooks. This will help us keep track and categorize our finances for taxes that we must submit each year. It’s $20 a month, but might be cheaper to pay for a year’s worth of subscription. We brought the item to a vote and members in attendance unanimously approved the decision to allow the club to use Quickbooks for tax purposes.

Total balance: $33,185.53 Operating fund: $20,143.67

Josh put $5,000 in a Certificate of Deposit. It comes out 9/6/19. The club will accrue interest on the account. Jeff recommended that Josh look at Vanguard and Betterment for future CDs.

Josh will also be sending out emails to run leaders for their free race entry.

Pi Day Report-Caroline and Megan:

Successes: -People were positive, despite the course changes. -Beer at the end was great -Timer guys were great, but did not provide pins for packet pickup -Ziplock bags worked for packet pickup -Volunteers stayed later to help out more -Old Chicago was a good partner -Wooden utensils that we got from Amazon were great for Pie -Parks and Rec was pleased with our -We upped our donation to $500 for the Mountain Bike Club for maintaining the trails. -The police officer was cool that came and sat near the start for us. -We had amazing runners: Answer to Everything (42 mile) finishers - 3 Ultra Pi Slam (29 mile) finishers - 6 Marathon Finishers - 32 Pi Slam (16 mile) Finishers - 27 Half Marathon Finishers - 133 5k Finishers - 145 *Of those, 52 runners were from Garmin Total we earned about $19,000 for this year, but profit will be around $2,000-3,000. Timer guys did a great job will all the different races

Lessons Learned: -Notifying North Lawrence Residents of the race -Parking and figuring out how to do that better in the future -Don’t lose checklist sheets -It takes six people to hold down a tent -Tent got bent-but should be able to replaced with our spare tent parts. -Walk backup course for changes-sometimes the alternative course changes too. -Volunteers were still needed for the event. -Guidebook didn’t go out because of the course change. -People didn’t think there was pie. -Cupless didn’t work this year, but will make it better for next year. Cara-Maybe look into collapsible cups for the Birthday Fatass.

Mary Ann Frevert sent the board a message: There needs to be a way to notify North Lawrence residents. She also thought it would be a good idea to reach out to local businesses in North Lawrence to sponsor. She also wanted to point out that the one of the biggest concerns from North Lawrence residents was the concern that there wasn’t room for emergency vehicles to make their way to someone in case of an emergency because of the side street parking.

Skyline Shuffle update-Josh

We got red and yellow socks for the race. Matt is going to look amazing in them. We need everyone to sign up. All the forms are in again. Caroline will help out with the Facebook Ads. Still doing the prediction timing. Volunteers-Matt is in charge and will be posting soon.

In the future-Josh wants to look at ways to go toward more tier based/inclusive awards to make sure everyone feels included. Will be looking into what other races are doing.

Golden Hawk Update-Cara:

A few people have had to drop from the challenge, but otherwise going strong. Looking forward to the next race in the series.

Clean Up Events-Lisa:

Clinton April 20 every Earth day event. We will be urging members to go to this event.

The are some other opportunities to help restore the Lawrence River Trails. Upcoming dates: April 11 from 4-7 p.m. April 20 from 8-10 a.m. May 11 from 11-12 p.m.

Volunteer Committee Update and Ideas-Cara:

Mark, Ed and Jordan are interested in being on the committee. The committee will be responsible for getting people interested and involved. They will put a call out for volunteer group through facebook and email. We would like to have people on the committee that have some previous volunteer experience. We want to get that group together and have them start meeting on a regular basis. If you are interested in being on the committee, please reach out to Cara.

Update on Patreon sponsorships-Josh:

Josh used the board email to sign up with Patreon. We have given money to several podcasts creators to help spread the word of our club and our races. People can see that we support different podcasts. Some podcasts include: Trail Sisters Ten Junk Miles I run far

Storage unit access-Cara:

Sara Morris is working on updated list on people who need access to that. We need to have people who need access to the storage units have keys.

Future Meeting locations-Cara:

We are trying to look for different venues to host our monthly meetings. S&S Coffeehouse requires us to purchase a $25 gift card to rent the room. The benefits are that food and drinks are available. Michael volunteered to pay for the gift card. Caroline mentioned that Johnny’s West has a room that they allow people to use as another location. We plan to switch up the location of our monthly meetings. Every other month will be a library meeting and then followed by a more social meeting at location the serves food/drinks.

Other business:

We are looking at ways to communicate better with our non-facebook members. We might be looking into ways to streamline the website. Please look at our website https://trailhawks.com/ for more updates.

Tamara are willing to do an Instagram page for LTH. John Knepper has also expressed interest in helping with an Instagram page.

April 24 will be our next meeting at S&S at 7 p.m.

Meeting adjourned at 8:44 p.m.