How do you characterize a volunteer Board of Directors (BOD) for an organization like AERC? Do you measure it in terms of years of experience on the BOD, numbers of miles ridden, years of membership in AERC, acceptance of change, or the number of motions passed? Some of this information is factual and easy to come by and some is more difficult to quantify.

For example, when I was first elected to the board in 2001, there were many long-time BOD members. The total experience of the serving directors was about 186 years. Many had served for more than 15 years.

Over the next five years, the combined experience years of our directors has decreased as new BOD members have taken the place of those retiring. This year, two more directors with long experience retired. The present total experience on the BOD is now 91 years spread over the 26 directors. We still have several directors on the BOD with experience approaching 15 years.

This decrease in itself is neither good nor bad. Positive aspects of less experience may mean new ideas can be suggested and accepted easier, moving away from "this is how we've always done it" and "it isn't broken so we don't need to fix it" to something new.

Negatives might include having proposals that seem to be new and not realizing that they've already been tried in the past and had difficulties. Another might be not understanding what some of the underlying reasons were that went into the structure we have now when we try to change that structure today. The present BOD still has access to many retired BOD members for their experience and advice.

In gender distribution, the BOD today is the same as it was five years ago, with slightly more men than women, 14 and 12. We have veterinarians, ride managers, and riders to represent all aspects of AERC from LD to international. The AERC International representation on the BOD has grown from 10 directors in 2001 to 16 in 2006.

Your present directors have a combined lifetime mileage of 167,000. The high is 25,600 miles and the low is 50 miles for one vet. The average for all the directors is 6500 miles. The high in LD miles is 1525. As riders, the BOD members are well above average in lifetime miles.

With respect to change, the BOD has moved AERC onto the worldwide web, increased education and trail efforts, and focused on the welfare of the horse in the past few years. These represent significant changes over this period for the BOD. I believe the BOD has been responsive to change and willing to initiate it.

Your BOD is composed of 26 volunteers putting in their own time and money to serve AERC and its membership. Sometimes it's a thankless job and at other times it can be very satisfying to give something back to the activity that has provided fun and goals for me over the past 11 years.