The USPRE Board of Directors met on January 20 in the USPRE Offices in Wellington for their Annual Meeting.
Below is a summary of the proceedings:
The Conflict of Interest Statement was distributed with the Board packet and members were asked to return them to Joan at their earliest convenience., which was followed by the Approval of Minutes from Fall Board Meeting.
President Kim Boyer reported to the Board that USPRE was starting 2015 with a strong office staff and more proficient operations systems due to new hiring and procedures put in place by various Directors.
The topic of accession was high on the Agenda. Over this coming year the Board will be discussing who should be the next President of USPRE and decide by the Fall meeting who would be taking the reins in January. It was decided that the Board vote for the new President at the Fall 2014 meeting, to give time for that person to prepare to take over January 1.
The report of the Activities of the Management Committee was distributed with the Board Packet and will be distributed to the members at the Annual Member Meeting at Feria in September. Some discussion occurred about how much was accomplished this past year and initiatives for 2015.
Executive Director Joan Mack reported that there have been many changes in this past year that have improved not only the efficiency of the office but the customer service aspects and morale as well. Fresh Desk has been a great addition to our customer service tools and Director of Operations Sally Rodriguez reported more on this during her part of the meeting.
Joan also reported that USPRE currently has 491 members and growth has continued apace. Our goal is to have 600 active members by January 2015 and we continue to work to that. Sally also reported on this and announced that we will have Membership Cards which will go out to each member and will have their Owner/Breeder code as well as address and membership expiration date. We think this will be very welcome to our members.
COPA USA has been very well received, reported Kim and Janne. We had five PREs in national finals in 2014. Side note: Janne’s video received over 330,000 views and over 8,000 shares. Janne said her freestyle video played on all the screens at the USEF Convention. The PRE is getting a lot of ttention now.
2014 Financials were circulated, discussed and approved.
2015 Budget and Programs were discussed and passed.
Additionally, we will be unveiling the USPRE Catalogue of Breeding Stock in the first quarter of this year. We feel that the USPRE Catalogue will be a very helpful tool for promotion of commercial breeding stock for members, and are creating an interactive and fully searchable website for this purpose. Combined with our FB capability, it is a unique service. USPRE has over 26,000 likes on our Facebook page, which means that our marketing capability for entries in the Catalgue is enormous.
Meeting was officially adjourned at 1:00 pm
Reports from Office Staff were held in the afternoon.