I recently saw a post on the Allegheny Trail Facebook page, where the West Virginia Scenic Trails Association (WVSTA) was requesting funds to build a bridge across Beaver Creek in Watoga State Park in honor of trail volunteer who passed away (see attached).

The WVSTA maintains the Allegheny Trail in its entirety and has vastly improved its efforts over the past few years.  I think it would be fitting for us to make a donation to this project in effort to show support as a sister organization.

I am in favor of donating. 

I am in favor of donating too.  Sounds like a good cause, and fitting to our objectives.  I’m fine with either suggested amount.

Additional thought on this, tied to my informational emails topic, I think we should start advertising where we donate club funds to.  I don’t know who all the club has donated to in the past, but I’m sure they were all good causes like this.  I think club members would be happy to hear that club funds are used to support good causes.  

@charleannej, some examples that come to mind of donation entities (other than causes designated by race directors): Meeks Mountain Trail Alliance, Heart of the Highlands Trail System, etc.   Lauren could supply an exhaustive listing if needed down the road.

One other topic/question for Other Business, has there ever been discussion about offering club members a discount for club races?  I’m sure it’s not an easy thing to do (most things aren’t), but it would be a nice perk if possible.  

@charleannej, yes, we have done that in the past for certain races.  Haulin' in the Holler and the Dirty Dog were the ones that did.  We left it as an optional choice for race directors.  The discount idea simply died with those races I believe.

As a race director, it certainly complicates budgeting.  Dan and I never have done discounts for club members, but I'm not opposed to it.  We would just need to have ample heads-up attempt to budget for discounts.  Race budgeting has become far more difficult over the past year with price increases.  We had to raise entry $10 for Highlands and we're even a bit uneasy that it will not be enough.

I agree with Adam on this one.  I need another year with the KT before I could really answer.  I didn't have as many registrations as anticipated last year and made it difficult to spread the costs.  

Yes, I support the donation to the WVSTA as well.

Just an update on my to-do list. I still need to move the website to a new hosting plan to save us money on year-to-year hosting fees. We talked about this at one of last year's meetings but I haven't done it yet. I'm waiting for a weekday that I'm available, not close to a race registration or race day, to sit down and spend some time moving the website. It would take the website offline for a few hours to a day which is why I'm waiting.

Coming from the Frozen Sasquatch with a fresh budget in front of me I can add to some of the race discount comments. Most races have raised entry fees over the last decade. I do not see the benefit of raising race fees just to give members a discount for those handful of races that do not offer a discount now. Sasquatch has not raised the original price since it's first year in 2010. I am proud of that. We have just done some serious "financial gymnastics" to keep the entry fee affordable and runners keep coming back. Looking at the financial total of RSU we had $92 club member discount for over $10,000 in revenue this Sasquatch.  

Posted by: @arhodes5

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Yes, I support the donation to the WVSTA as well.

Just an update on my to-do list. I still need to move the website to a new hosting plan to save us money on year-to-year hosting fees. We talked about this at one of last year's meetings but I haven't done it yet. I'm waiting for a weekday that I'm available, not close to a race registration or race day, to sit down and spend some time moving the website. It would take the website offline for a few hours to a day which is why I'm waiting.

Thanks for taking care of this Andrew and saving the club money with the new hosting plan.

I move that we donate $300 to the West Virginia Scenic Trails Association (WVSTA) to build a bridge across Beaver Creek in Watoga State Park.

I second the motion to donate $300 to the West Virginia Scenic Trails Association (WVSTA) to build a bridge across Beaver Creek in Watoga State Park.

@bob-luther, thanks Bob.

I think the idea of considering club benefits is an interesting one. The first question I think about is what is the purpose of the club. This is a bigger discussion -- might actually require 20-30 miles to really talk it out. But why do we bother with this whole thing? Why does anyone choose to join it in the first place? Once we have an answer there we can get into what the club should give back to members.

I suspect that $5 off race entries isn't really what anyone wants or needs from this group. But I am quite curious now what we do want/need. Maybe it's the community aspect and we ought to focus in on that. Maybe it's just a series of dependably awesome races that are not run for profit so we're already doing that. Maybe it's to make an impact and we out to consider making more donations or holding more non-competitive events. 

Also entirely possible you all have already figured these things out in other iterations of this board.