Cheryl Talbert
Mountaineers Global Adventures (GA) gets members out on exciting multi-day adventures across North America and worldwide. We have several new leaders and trips in process, but keeping the program running smoothly and efficiently - including the increasing load of amazing trips to review and leaders looking to certify - requires more time than our current small committee can handle. We have identified a number of support roles that individually don't take much time but, if we could get willing volunteers to take them on, would assure that our program can continue to grow and thrive.
See the role descriptions below, and contact co-chairs Cindy Hoover cyn@zipcon.com or Cheryl Talbert cascadehiker12@gmail.com with questions or to volunteer.
Co-Chairs
The people in this role are the primary liaisons of the Global Adventures Committee (GAC) with Mountaineers staff and leadership. They represent the GAC on the Branch Leadership Council and oversee the implementation and periodic updating of GA standards and processes to maintain a sound program that delivers appealing trips to members. The Co-Chairs are final approvers of record for GA budgets and new leaders, and ensure that the program revenues exceed expenses. They attend and facilitate monthly GAC meetings, oversee the final approval of new leaders, help produce and deliver annual or bi-annual leader trainings, mentor new leaders through trip development and budgeting/financial management (with the other committee officers), and recruit new committee members and successors for essential committee roles.
Assuming that all the roles below are in place, the Co-Chair role requires 5-8 hours per month, depending on the need to respond to issues that arise. Training and mentoring will be provided.
Communications/Secretary
Role 1: Secretary - Committee Administration
The secretary/committee admin role is responsible for scheduling monthly GAC meetings (managing the event page and Zoom meetings); working with committee members and GA leaders to identify agenda items; sending meeting reminders; taking notes during the meetings; reviewing comments, conclusions, and decisions; and maintaining, storing, and distributing meeting notes and decisions. This role should take 3-6 hours per month, including attending the monthly meetings.
Role 2: Committee webPage and Document Management
This role maintains the GAC committee webpage, including overseeing the timely updating of folders on the page. This role focuses primarily on Trip Tracking (setting up folders for each trip, keeping track of proposals and their status as they move through the approval and execution process, gathering and posting trip-specific documents) including proposal and comment documents, safety management plans, trip archives, and trip reports - in the folders on the webpage. This role could potentially take 6-10 hours per month if we continue to have so many trips and leaders moving through. It is assumed that others are creating the documents and the person in this role is merely sending out reminders and gathering and storing them in the right place.
Role 3: Global Adventures Communication
This role is responsible for working with the Co-Chairs to maintain and increase the visibility of the GA program to members, staff, the Board of Directors, and potential trip leaders. It would include maintaining up-to-date text and links on our committee’s ‘front page’; soliciting authors for quarterly GA articles in Mountaineer magazine as well as periodic blog submissions and submitting that content to staff for editing and publication; and any other ideas to increase visibility (such as organizing periodic presentations focusing on past and proposed GA trips).
Finance/Treasurer
The Treasurer is responsible for assembling the annual budget with inforomation from the Co-Chairs and GA leaders (helping leaders build their budgets and summaries and assembling them into an annual plan); reviewing and approving leaders expense reimbursement requests, vendor payments, and wire requests (including verifying that spending continues to be no greater than revenues plus the 16% admin reserve); building a summary at the end of each fiscal year, including trip by trip and total-year GAC expenses and revenues; maintaining GAC budgeting and tracking forms; training new leaders on planning and tracking tools and expectations; participating in The Mountaineers Finance Committee; and helping Co-Chairs maintain awareness of the margin that we contribute as well as representing the GAC in organization-wide financial decisions. This role could take up to 4-6 hours for a couple of months in the spring when club-level budgets are requested, and no more than an hour a month or less for the other months.
Leader Development
The Leader Development Officer solicits applicants to become leaders and manages their vetting process (checks references, checks minimum qualifications, schedules interviews, and documents findings). The Leader Development Officer may do interviews themselves or call upon the Co-Chairs to do some. This role also oversees and organizes the scheduling and promotion-posting of annual or bi-annual GA Leader training, develops training materials for new leaders, and schedules presenters for new leader trainings. Finally, this person maintains the GAC leader roster, adding new leaders and removing inactive ones and maintaining up-to-date notes on all the leaders’ statuses.
This role could take 4-6 hours in some months and might go other months without tasks. When a leader training is being planned and scheduled, there could be 6-8 hours of prep work as part of a team, plus ~10 hours attending the training.
Global Adventures Committee Member
The GAC members are responsible for reviewing proposals, providing in-depth feedback, and approving proposals, as well as providing guidance on GA processes and policies. Evening Zoom meetings are held on the third Monday of every month, and proposals require 1-3 hours of time for review in between meetings. The GAC members should be experienced travelers and should be active in a Mountaineers activity and/or activity committee.
