Impressions from the USAS Board Meeting

[Marc Orvin]

Interesting BOD meeting. A few highlights:
They are busy trying to finagle a way to borrow from the awesome fund that the shotgun folks have funded over the years. The Bunker Club is fat with funds. So, in order to keep USAS afloat, they are trying to tap that fund. One thing my daddy always told me was, if you are not able to meet your current obligations, don't borrow more money. Evidently, that has not occured to the USAS Board. The Bunker Club has been wise to keep their accounts separate from USAS.

The board has implemented a $20 coach fee. Toward the end of the meeting, Ashley, the new competitions director, explained a bit about this. Seems that USOPC charges USAS $15 per day for every coach at the match. I asked how they knew how many coaches were there. USAS has to report that, as they are keeping track of the SafeSport stuff. So a person who has completed SafeSport and is a coach, is a financial liability to USAS. So what sense does it make to force parents now to have SafeSport and register as a coach in order to coach their own child. They get $20, once a year, and pay USOPC $15 per day for every day that parent is at an event coaching their child. Before, a parent was not considered as a coach, so no liability to USAS. Makes no sense to this old-timer.

On the coach fee issue, I got some clarification. Even though the website says that the $20 is good for all three selection matches, that is not the case. It is $20 for each event. Also, the $15 per shooter collected by the USOPC is only for events held at the USOPC. So why charge a $20 fee at Ft Moore when nobody is billing USAS for coaches at that event?

They were in bed with a direct marketing firm who was only returning 22 cents on every dollar donated to USAS. They wisely decided to end that relationship.

A presentation was made about raising membership fees across the board. There is a membership known as a "fan" membership. $30. Not eligible to compete. No bling included. Just a way to say you support USAS. A board member rightfully objected to that fee being increased as the fan gets nothing in return, not even a bumper sticker. His contention was that if we expect more support, make the fan membership cheaper, not more expensive. A lot like some websites where you donate a couple bucks to keep them going. His objections were enough for the board to table the motion and establish a membership committee (you know, like all committees, if you want something stalled, form a committee.)

I asked at the beginning of the meeting if the recording of the meeting would be made available on the website. I mentioned that the recording for the last board meeting had never appeared anywhere that the membership could view it. Mr Kozeniesky stated that the recordings for both the previous and the current board meetings would be made available. He didn't say when, or where.

If the recording does come available, I will post it here on TargetTalk. I think all members should be aware of the state of the organization.

[atomicgale]

(you know, like all committees, if you want something stalled, form a committee.)

I've got a brilliant solution - let's form a committee to oversee the other committees!

( On a serious note, is there a specific §501(c)(3) organization under either CMP or USA Shooting for charitable donations? More details on that later . . . )

[Rover]

I guess there is a reason that the members at my "hot" club said "screw this" and opted out of USAS to stick with the NRA.

[jhmIII]

I got an announcement of the board meeting 10 minutes after it started.

[Marc Orvin]

As reported in the original post, I am providing the link that Craig Kozeniesky gave me for finding the recordings of previous board meetings. If you lose this link, you can go to the USAS website and look under Resources and you can scroll through a bunch of stuff to eventually find all the board meetings back in to 2022.

https://usashooting.org/?s=Recordings

I think it would benefit each of us who are members of USAS to hear what our board of directors are doing and saying. Much more is being said than done.

[jhmIII]

Marc - you'll love this.
I had to update my background check to host my state's JO Qualifiers. ($40 to USAS of course)
It's a nit, but still irritating.
I had to pay (never have before) but Ashley did explain that USAS used to pay for it when I officiated at their national matches.
(Although I did go help run her Ole Miss Open a few months ago)

Once Rach moved out of shooting, no great desire to do that away from NM. The JO Quals and our 3P Air matches keep that (small) hunger fed.