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2004 Executive Board Minutes
February 12, 2004Executive Board phone conference
Meeting convened at 9:30PM Eastern time. Participating on the phone conference were President Nancy Stevens-Brown, Executive VP Kelly Holly, VP Membership Teresa Keville, VP Education Noel Martonovich, VP Development Sheri Benjamin, General Secretary Jennifer Williams, and National Office Manager Lynn Stevens.
Discussion of Taxes: Certain individuals received more than $600 from the AVA in 2003 and therefore need a 1099 form for their taxes. Tax matters are the Treasurer's responsibility. The National Office manager needs to supply the Treasurer with the needed information.
National Office report
- Some difficulties in transition, system difficulties slowly being worked out.
- Everyone needs to be reminded of two-week time span for requests of N.O.
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March 5, 2004Minutes of a Meeting of the American Vaulting Association Executive Board
Santa Cruz, CA
The meeting was called to order at 8:05 AM.
Roll Call: In attendance were Nancy Stevens-Brown (President), Kelley Holly (Executive VP), Teresa Keville (VP Membership), Noel Martonovich (VP Education), Sheri Benjamin (VP Development), Jan Garrod (Treasurer), Patty Littmann (VP Competitions), Jen Williams (General Secretary).
Treasurer's Report:
Oct 1 2003 balance was $126,000; $20,000 in bills remains unpaid from Nationals 2003 so our actual starting balance was $106,000. The board voted in November 2003 to disburse $20,000 over last year's budget in order to support the Board's goals of organizational growth; so this year's budget will be expected to have expenses exceeding income by about $20K.
The Executive Board recommends that all possible event reconciliations (including horse travel refunds) should be accomplished within 10 working days of the close of competition.
Discussion on Special Funds:
Each fund needs to be researched to discern its intent when founded, any existing disbursement protocol, and a determination of what VP and what committee chair represents disbursement authority. Jen Williams to research this.
Motion (Benjamin/Garrod): Offer AVA Sustaining Memberships at the Spirit of Vaulting conference for $25 (in consideration of the $15 premium already paid by nonmembers to attend the conference). Unanimous.
Motion (Benjamin/Littmann): Allocate 20% of the profit of certain Educational activities that require heavy regional involvement to the hosting region. Unanimous.
Motion (Holly/Benjamin): The $772.40 in the Auction special fund be reserved as seed money for Auction 2005 and placed on a new line item in the Budget. Unanimous.
Motion (Stevens-Brown/Keville): Move the $353.43 appearing in “Special Fund - other” to the International Committee. Unanimous.
National Office Report:
The National Office manager confers weekly with Kelley Holly.
Membership processing was current as of a week ago.
The database still needs overhaul, especially to be useful for historical queries. Marianne Rose has agreed to overhaul the database. Kelley suggests that the data verification and re-entry should begin with only current members and focus on selection trials participants, to be expanded as possible in the future. A system for offsite database backups should be instituted.
Filing is behind. Lynn is to be asked to find an inexpensive resource (perhaps her children) to help her catch up. She will be allocated $100 from Sheri's development budget to use at her discretion for this.
When relaying checks to Lynn, committee chairs must indicate to Lynn on which line items the deposits belong. VPs are reminded of the possibility of having their expenses preapproved, rather than reimbursed. When managing events involving large numbers of checks, chairs are requested to send in the work (e.g. checks to deposit) incrementally, rather than in a large unit.
Miscellaneous:
Sheri will talk to Adrienne Stang around Nationals to help with publicity for the Apprentice Judge program, hoping to increase recruiting.
Jan Garrod should change the budget name “Youth Council” to “Athlete's Council”.
Permission was granted for Jen Williams to include Board Meeting attendance information on the ballot information for elections.
Motion to adjourn (Garrod/Holly). Unanimous.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:10 AM.
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April 8, 2004Exec Board Conference Call Minutes
Attending: Nancy Stevens-Brown, Jan Garrod, Patty Littmann, Noel Martonovich, Sheri Benjamin
Absent: Kelley Holly, Teresa Keville, Jen Williams
Meeting was called to order at 6 p.m.
FINANCE
Jan Garrod reported that inflow is better than outflow at this point. The annual meeting at least broke even, maybe on the plus side. Auction earned around $7K.
Noel's education committee is ahead $3K. Through membership dues, etc., 60 percent of projected of budget is in.
Jan reported that because of additional work for the Gladstone conference, the national office manager has fallen behind on getting Visa payments collected. Sheri agreed to help Lynn Stevens with this project, to get caught up.
ACTION: Lynn Stevens to deliver materials to Sheri so she can start.
ACTION: Jan Garrod to make sure Annual Meeting/Auction revenue is deposited as soon as possible.
COMPETITIONS
Patty Littmann and Sue Detol have been working hard to try to make organizing and running a recognized competition not so scary or daunting.
There was discussion about having all the paperwork go to the Competitions Secretary, and the Secretary handling it first at the management level. When that's done, she'll send the money to the national office. This will take some burden off the National Office Manager. The Competitions Secretary will keep all score sheets and results.
Patty brought forth an idea about Zone Awards-a set of high point awards between the regional and national level. Sue Detol has volunteered to do the paperwork for such a program. All agreed the program should be further explored.
ACTION: Patty to pursue the feasibility of this program.
Having enough judges for all the competitions we're projecting to have is a problem.
ACTION: Nancy Stevens-Brown and Patty Littmann to draft a letter to ask the Judges Committee to actively address this issue. Draft will be to the Executive Board by April 20.
EDUCATION
Noel Martonovich reports that the Gladstone conference was a terrific success, but that regions don't seem all that interested in taking on something similar, though a good template has already been developed. Noel discussed that she might use the profits from the Gladstone conference to perhaps put on a series of educational vaulting camps instead.
MEMBERSHIP
Executive board discussed the letter that Sue Detol sent to the EB, recommending which materials would definitively go into membership packets for new clubs going forward. The executive board agreed with all of Sue's committee's recommendations. Included in that committee's recommendations was to give a copy of Emma Drinker and Isabelle Bibbler's book to all new clubs. All agreed that this was an excellent idea. Noel said the money for such books would come out of her education budget. Board also agreed that the packet should include two additional items: something on therapeutic vaulting, as well as a single sheet (which will go on the website as well) on “Whom to Call for What.”
ACTION: Sheri to bring Kelly up to date on discussion, and have her coordinate the membership packets, as well as the three new packet items discussed, above.
DEVELOPMENT
Sheri Benjamin reported that she's had several meetings with the web designers, and is pleased with progress. She “warned” that she is now getting to the content development/refreshment stage, and will be calling on both executive board members and regular board members to give her content as needed.
Sheri also wanted to make sure that she had 100 percent participation in both the Yahoo Group Executive Board group and the Yahoo Group Board group. She will continue to hunt down everyone via phone and email, until all current members of these AVA groups have also registered in the members only section of these Yahoo Groups.
Meeting adjourned at 7:15 p.m.
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April 29, 2004Executive Board Phone Conference
4/29/04
The meeting was called to order at 8PM EDT/5PM PDT. Present on the line were Nancy Stevens-Brown, Kelley Holly, Teresa Keville, Patty Littmann, Sheri Benjamin, Jan Garrod, and Jennifer Williams. Not present was Noel Martonovich. Suzanne Detol was also present.
Late Memberships Issue
Suzanne Detol, as Competition Secretary, had brought to the Board's attention a membership matter involving the FACE OFF Vaulting Challenge, March 27-28, 2004. A club had sent in its AVA memberships after the close of entries; 13 memberships were postmarked 2 days after the close of entries, and 2 memberships were almost 3 weeks late. The competitors did not fill out Event Membership forms, but were all members by the time of competition.
Motion (Garrod/Holly): Allow the placings of the competitors in question for the competition to stand, but disallow these scores from counting for any AVA awards programs (i.e. High Point). Unanimously approved. Sue and Nancy will write letters to the Competition Management and to the club, informing them of the decision and advising them of how to avoid such situations in the future.
Sue and Patty Littmann made available some proposals for rule changes to simplify membership requirements for competition. The EB will relay suggestions to Sue and the proposals will be brought to the full Board.
The question of the membership situation involving the VIP spring competition of 2003, leading to the withdrawal of recognition from that competition, was briefly discussed. Better documentation is needed of the rules regarding the combination of recognized and unrecognized competitions, and of the AVA High Point program. The Executive Board must take minutes of all meetings and decisions and be sure all EB members are informed of decisions.
Zone Awards
Patty Littmann has more fully developed the idea for Zone Awards, and presented some text to include in the next Vaulting World.
Vaulting World
Sheri Benjamin will work more closely with Marianne Rose to attempt to enhance the utility of Vaulting World as a tool to support and increase membership.
Circle of Friends - Auction
The Circle of Friends requested a greater portion of the proceeds from Auction 2004 to support their plans. As the Board previously had decided how much of the Auction funds to allocate to the CoF, the EB will refer this back to the Board.
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