Jul 1, 2025 | NCDCTA BOD Meeting - Virtual
Attendees:Helen Ingersoll Amy Brumbach Heather Turner Jordan McKenzie-Solis Ellie Balakrishnan Charlotte Meli Ali LaTorre Katherine Thornton Lisa Chisholm Absent: Mandi Martyn Heather Boyer Amanda Delgado Will Barrus
President, Helen Ingersoll, called the meeting to order at 7:02
Katherine Thornton read the NCDCTA Charter.
NCDCTA BOARD TEAM CHARTER:
- We the board of the NCDCTA hold the following values as guiding principles to carry out the mission of our organization.
- To educate, promote camaraderie and recognize achievement in dressage and eventing.
- Respect, Humility, Patience, Self Awareness, Supportiveness, Accountability, Listening, Generosity, and Helpfulness
- Communication that is: Clear, Flexible, Ongoing, Supportive, Constructive and Safe while celebrating brave efforts to question and disagree.
- Decision making that is shared. Roles that can be flexible and board members that are engaged, present, and share appreciation for and with one another, freely.
Reports:
- Presidents and competition Report: Helen Ingersoll
- Temporarily taken over competition chair
- Harvest Moon schooling show manager, Margaret Creavar
- Are we charging competitors enough to cover this cost?
- Consider adding nonrefundable grounds vs office fee
- Olga Wagner meeting planned next week to discuss hiring as NCDCTA representative/show manager
- List created to delineate responsibilities between roles and paid positions
- Need to further delineate outstanding tasks
- Need to specify roles and tasks to specific volunteers
- Vice Presidents Report: Amy Brumbach
- Current membership numbers:
- Volunteer Card Horses: 86
- Other member information of interest
- Other Horse Information of Interest
- Volunteer Card Information
- Outstanding Volunteer Cards: 2716
- Please keep spreading word about festival
- Treasurer Report: Heather Turner
- Total in accounts: $28,200
- Income from memberships, HOY registration, sponsorships
- A few more sponsorships have come in
- Gala Report: Ellie Balakrishnan
- Met with Amy recently about hospitality
- Volunteer Report: Charlotte Meli
- Helping Eli and Heather B with sponsorship
- Volunteer needs for festival to come in August
- Start recruiting in August
- Sponsorship Report: Heather Boyer
- Communications Report: Lisa Chisholm
- Shoutout to Heather B for work on sponsors
- Continue to post updates on social media
- Plan to have most of pages filed out by next BOD meeting
- Plan to have ability to pay online for sponsorships, etc
- Amy to help post re: equine festival promotion
- Will focus on branding in future newsletters
- Dressage Report: Ali LaTorre
- 12 people signed up for L program
- Working on festival lectures
- Eventing Report: Katherine Thornton
- UNDERWAY – “one pager” describing benefits of membership
- July 2 – First meeting held with the CT Leadership Team
- Introductions quick around the room and “me in a minute”
- Where are we in 2025 – what happened so far this year
- Relationship with FENCE, TIEC, Windridge HT
- Bridge between Pony Club and NCDCTA – what would make that meaningful
- Bridge between Hunting and NCDCTA – what would make that meaningful
- Promote Championships, clinic and HOY via social media
- Do organizers of other horse sports want to include arena eventing or CT at regular horse shows?
- Standards for NCDCTA recognition (organizers, facilities, etc)
- UNDERWAY – ongoing FB Groups posts to encourage membership
- UNDERWAY – written interview with Woodge/David – potential 2026 clinicians
- NOT YET STARTED - Order Eventing Championship Ribbons from Hodges
- NOT YET STARTED - Begin process for “Organizer Standards” program based on USEA Organizer Committee work
- Ongoing Discussions USEA Area 2
- Get Area 2 eventing championships at CHP –
- Connected with USEA to solicit the bid for the Area 2 Champs at CHP for 2027
- Sent email to HT organizer at CHP to make that bid (have sent this THREE times with NO response…)
- COMPLETED - Requested eventer emails to stimulate membership – from USEA
- Identify scholarship opportunities, and clinic support –
- Completed-Reached out re eventing clinician for Fall Festival and did receive a list of names
- Ongoing FAQ emails to stimulate membership
- Sent FAQ#1 , #2, #3 with good response
- Started FB posts – “Why Combined Test” (Future topics include: Benefits of NCDCTA membership; Why school XC?)
- Beginning education campaign about CTs and their value to encourage beginning and aging competitors
- Drafted second newsletter article, “Moving up isn’t necessarily the point” for eventing
- Activating Social posts – very effectively!
- Jr/Yr Report: Mandi Martyn
- The website has the Jr/YR scholarship application up and running
- Membership Secretary Report: Will Barrus
- HOY was updated twice in June and will be updated twice again in July.
- Membership numbers are current and more-or-less on target for what we did last year.
- Most HOY questions are related to qualifying and identifying any score issues.
- Results for Dressage TOC at May and June WHES do not count for HOY due to nationally recognized shows on the same day (less than 50 miles away). CHP was advised multiple times, but may not have advised their participants. The 50-mile rule is based on "discipline" and has nothing to do with how we report HOY results. CHP moved some of their dates onto dates already occupied by nationally-recognized dressage competitions and is entirely responsible for WHES Dressage TOC not being recognized. The remaining WHES competitions in 2025 are not affected and Dressage TOC results will count for those competitions.
- Website: Membership fields have been mapped and memberships will be transferred in July. Bundled (family) memberships will be handled individually.
- Website: Calendar - Calendar entries will be uploaded manually.
- Website: Content - Now that the website template has been established I will begin moving content over to the new website including newsletters, minutes, scholarships and forms. Google forms will be our primary form engine except for Memberships and the calendar. Content such as minutes, newsletters, etc. will reside in google drive and will be referenced via links.
Old Business:
New Business:
Next meeting: August 5 @ 7pm - Virtual
Helen adjourned the meeting at 8:04
Minutes respectfully submitted by Jordan McKenzie-Solis, Recording Secretary.
Minutes passed by majority Board vote.
Action items
- Helen needs dates for Eventing championships so that she can be present
- Helen and Katherine to do a group order with Olga on ribbons for Harvest Moon, Eventing championships, schooling show NCDCTA championships, western dressage high score
