Board Meeting Minutes - 26SEP2019

Meeting by phone 9PM Friday September 26.

Attending

All board members present: Pavan Vedere, Marc Tsukakoshi, Stan Bischof

Agenda

1. Election of officers.
2. Bylaws/Constitution.
3. Initial discussion of initiatives.

Discussion

1. Election of officers. This was formality mostly since just the three of us in this initial meeting. By unanimous consent Pavan is President, Marc is Vice President and Stan is Treasurer/Secretary.
2. Bylaws/Constitution. Since we are derived from Region 5, it was decided that we would adopt the founding documents from Region 5 and modify them as needed for Region 6. No discussion here- unanimous consent.
3. General discussion
   • Marc: with our previous work in Region 5, "the needle didn't really move". We need to look at items that we can actually accomplish
   • Stan: we need visibility and transparency. Part of this is web presence. Proposed domain name cwbadminton.org and organization name Central West Badminton Association to complement NWBA and SWBA. Unanimous consent.
   • Stan: "Grass roots" is my first priority. Agree that we need to choose items that are important but also doable. Region 6 has many thousands of active players who are not USAB but are a major part of our sport.
   • Pavan: We can look at expanding the base of technical officials with clinics. This would complement the formal USAB process and be aimed more at the club and high school groups.
   • Pavan: what should our relation with USAB look like, realizing that most players in our area are not currently USAB.
     • Group: Clearly we should do what's possible to recruit new USAB members but at the same time the proliferation of the sport is a huge priority.
   • Marc: We should take a good look at the demographics.
   • Group: Whatever we do we need to generate $$ to support our actions. We have zero initially.
   • Stan: can we get a member list from USAB so that we can poll them? Failing that can we get USAB to forward our messages to the Region 6 members and provide demographics?
   • Pavan: Understanding demographics is a top priority. There are lots of groups even within the various clubs.
     • SGVBC has Filipino player group that meets regularly
     • Italian American Society in SSF sponsored tournament for many years
     • There's huge high school crowd
     • many bay area clubs
     • a huge proportion of the country's juniors are here in region 6
     • what groups can we include in extended meetings?
   • Marc: what can we do to get more USAB members? Introductory rate perhaps?
     • Not sure that $$ is an issue- maybe more no real reason to join and little visibility
   • Marc: clinics can be very useful
     • who can we get to help with clinics for players/coaches/officials?
   • Pavan: quite active with the serious juniors- what would be useful for that group? Our region has ~%40 of USAB juniors yet many advancement opportunities are far away so much travel $$.No junior voice on current USAB board. One objective would be to raise junior visibility at USAB board level. Pavan would like to join USAB's IRC
   • Marc: a larger goal is developing the best juniors as a country. Our physical size is a problem. What can we do to further the effort?
     • Other sports have same issues
   • Group: fundraising: Hold a charity tournament? Look for donations?
     • First step provide some sort of value proposition
     • Before any $$ need to be registered as non-profit
   • Group: Good start. Will exchange progress via email initially then set date for our next meeting. Phone meeting worked quite well.

Action Items

1. Stan: establish our domain
2. Stan: establish our charter documents based on Region 5's.
3. Pavan: write up notes concerning actions on technical officials
4. Pavan: check with USAB to see how we can communicate with Region 6 members and what demographics are..
5. Marc: first pass at a list of groups within our region.