Meeting Highlights

Georgia Dressage and Combined Training Association

Regular Meeting June 21, 2021

President Caren Caverly called the regular meeting of the GDCTA to order on June 21, 2021, at 7:05 pm on Zoom.

Secretary, Ashley Boyd, performed a roll call. A quorum of the board consisting of Caren Caverly, Abigail Kroupa, Joanne Morse, Ashley Boyd, Carol Tresan, Peter West, Liz Molloy, Heather Askew, Janie Pride, Julie Shannon, Jen Scherrens, and Danielle Perry were present. Guest Hannah Rickles. The minutes of the regular meeting for April 19, 2021, were emailed to board members prior to the meeting. Janie made a motion to approve the minutes. Julie seconded. Motion passed.

Treasurer’s Report – (Peter) April and May - both months were profitable. Ann Gribbons showed a slight loss.

VP Dressage Report – (Abigail) No Report

VP Combined Training – (Joanne) Done a lot toward clinics. Talked to Oliver Townend’s people. He can only do clinics in the month of November. Already booked for 2021 and 2022 so shooting for 2023. Had a talk with Michael Pollard. He is working on Betina Hoy and Michael Jung. Reached out to Land Safe and working on clinic with them for next year. Kim Severson clinic Sept 11 and 12 is continuing to be worked on. Working on credit card issues so that everybody can sign up and pay. Working on figuring out how to have people be able to sign up for more than one horse. Budget for jumper rounds at Jennifer Scherrens. Sunny Stevens will be the trainer for the jumper round. She has offered to do a show jumping round in the same way you would do a ride a test.

Kim Severson budget: motion by Carol and seconded by Heather. No questions. Motion by Janie to accept it. Jen seconded. The board voted for approval.

Jump-A-Round budget: Julie made motion to accept, Jen seconded. No questions. Julie motioned to accept and Carol seconded. Board passed the budget. Membership Report – (Mary Lou) Same number as we were at June two years ago. Looking good. No red!

Communication – (Joanne) June sent in email of the report. They are working on the cover of the yearbook. Deadline for next month's newsletter is July 25. Wild Apricot was not taking payments. Personally contacting people who had payment issues. If anybody has questions, have them go ahead and register and then call Caren to pay. The company is working on getting it working again.

Show Committee – (Julie) Schooling show in April and Greater Atlanta show reports. No questions regarding those. The next show is the Summer Finals schooling show at Wills Park in August.

Finance – (Peter) Nothing new to report.

Youth Program – (Joanne) Youth did not have a call this month. Joanna did a raffle at the last show she attended to help them raise money. Their raffle they had planned did not happen. Not sure why. Working on communication to get the meeting link sent out in a timely manner. Working on communication procedures so that people get them. They are still working on clinic and have a location. The prize list for Dressage4Kids is coming out soon.

Awards/Grants – (Janie) We have received 4 wonderful applications for training grants. The committee wondered if we can award two Adult Amateur grants or if we can ask one person if they would change to Open Grant? We will wait to see who else sends in grant applications because the deadline has not hit yet. The board meeting will be after the deadline.

Education – (Julie) The Anne Gribbons clinic lost $500 but it was a last-minute clinic. Everybody loved the clinic. This weekend is JJ Tate and is full with 10 riders. Laura Graves is in July, all of the names have been picked for that clinic. The Jeremy Steinberg clinic is also full with a wait list. One groom can audit the participants' rides but will have to pay to audit other rides. Owners also need to pay an audit fee for the weekend.

Nominating Committee – Hannah Rickles is on with us to audit and see if she would like to run. Need final slate of nominees by September.

Email Blasts – (Caren) Need to push Laura Graves, Jump-A-Round clinic, Summer Finals and push for volunteers for the shows, especially championships.

New Business

July “new member” check in to be done by Jen

New Ideas – (Caren, Julie, Peri) They went to Helen for the weekend with the amazing cabin they won in the auction and talked about GDCTA. Good idea brainstorming.

 Ideas for getting volunteers. Have a volunteer of the year award and award $1000 to the top volunteer. Try to get it sponsored by Triple Crown. Keep a running tally on the website with a leaderboard, so that people could see where they are. Open it up to the rest of the schooling shows and if they want their show volunteer hours to count toward the contest, they would have a buy-in fee to participate in the running. Motion for 1-3 in order of number of hours and raffle for 4th place for anybody who does 24 hrs to accept a $1000 volunteer of the year award. Motioned by Joanne and Carol seconded. Discussion and talking about special awards for anybody who volunteers for Regionals, which would be separate. 2022 Volunteer program approved by board. Motion by Mary Lou for a raffle for volunteers for Regional Volunteers for 2022 for $250 and a gift basket. They get an entry for each day they participate. Joanne seconded the motion. Regional Volunteers Program passed by board.

 Having at the August Summer Finals do a youth social. Getting all the juniors together and having a pizza party. Also have the parents there and be able to highlight the importance of volunteering. Then do one for adults at the Jeremy Steinberg Clinic in August, adults would be able to audit for free on Sunday and then have wine and cheese party. Also be able to roll out volunteer programs there as well. Caren made a motion to approve, Ashley second. Board passed this motion.

 Peri wants to do an adult camp. Has talked to a couple of clinicians about it and has a budget for it. Beanie Crow would be the main clinician with additional clinicians. Budget to be sent out via email. Including wine, food, massages, etc. She may already have enough interest to fill it.

 For 2023 to put on a large symposium and try to get Carl Hester and Charlotte Dujardin to come do it at the horse park. It could be huge with people coming from all over the county. The Horse Park will make sure we have the covered whenever we get them. Proposal to also bring in top eventers as well. The board loves the idea and thinks we should work towards it.

Regional Championships – (Caren) Huge deal for us to have it. We need everybody to step up.

 June is going to do the program.

 Marc Mesa will be the barn manager. Motion by Caren to pay barn manager $150 a day. Seconded by Julie. Board passed a motion.

 Bag stuffers will put the promotional items from the packets.

 Jennifer Keller at Yellow Horse Marketing, in 2019 a marketing professional came and promoted it. She is available to do it again for the same price which is $450 a day + hotel room. Discussion about it being a positive experience. It reached a lot of avenues. Julie motioned to accept her terms, Janie seconded. Approved by board.

 Need volunteers to be in charge of vendors and one to be in charge of sponsors.

 Peri cannot set up everything alone. Need people on Tuesday October 5 to set up arenas. We pay $50 per arena to put up arenas. Or $700 total. Going to reach out to the hunter arena setters to see if they will do it. Pack up is the next item. This is packing up everything from the office, etc., after the show.

 Need somebody in charge of volunteer and judge hospitality.

 Need somebody to do breakfast hospitality and hand out muffins, carrots, and drinks and give them out to the people.

 Awards table will be done by Janie and needs another volunteer.

 Awards ceremonies can be anybody, this can be somebody showing as well.

 The pod chief who divides the park into 3 pods and they have a golf cart and they make sure everything in their pod is running smoothly.

 We need 12 scribes and are going to try to do the paperless so they will need to be trained on the laptops.

 We need 7 ring stewards and 3 warm up arenas. Plus floaters for the day.

8:30 motioned to adjourn by Jenn, seconded by Joanne. Board approved.

Next meeting is August 16, 2021, at 7:00 PM sharp via Zoom.

Email Caren caverly at ccaverly@comcast.net to be included in the meeting.

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