FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: RE: Harley-Davidson 48 ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39211~ Wow. What a stunningly original design. So unlike any previous Harley models. It’s a good thing they killed off Buell with their conservative, boring same old rehashed designs. Damien DiPace San Lorenzo, California FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39217~ ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39219~ Mr. Dingman made a bad move with the selling to DMG, and made a bad move with his dealings with Mr. Iannucci. He let AHRMA go and made a fiasco of Vintage Days at Mid Ohio. He needs to take the blame and move on and get someone who understands racing, like Kevin Schwantz, to show the way, to get road racing, vintage or pro, back on its feet. Lawsuits in the U.S. are really detrimental to the sport, but money is not everything or is it? Daytona 2010 already does not look good, maybe AHRMA will make more money for Bill France (sic), than DMG/AMA show? Alex McLean #122 AHRMA Paris, France FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39218~ Wow! I just finished the 3rd installment of the interview with Rob Dingman and I have to say I am impressed. This has answered a lot of questions and cleared up pretty much all of the doubts that I have had over the last 2 years. I guess I need to pony up and get a membership at last. I am also pretty much disgusted with the apparently EXTREMELY biased coverage and “national enquirer” level of “reporting” from a few of the other sites that I frequent. Please keep up the good work and pretty good job at full coverage. This series of articles by David Swarts was actually very informative. Best regards, Mark Lewellen Ozark, Missouri FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39218~ Wonderful interview. As usual Roadracing World proves itself to indispensable in my house. I just became a Life Member of the AMA. I hung in with the AMA because I had a stake in motorcycling and it somehow paid to be a part of the AMA. I was constantly amazed at the byzantine, opaque, obfuscating way the organization was run over the last 25 years. Dingman’s interview confirmed much of what my friends & I have always suspected, that the AMA was an amateur “good ol’ boys” club that mainly took care of the “good ol’ boys”. Hopefully Dingman will be that leader who will move the AMA in the right direction. Although the fact is, the most significant piece of journalism regarding the recent history & management operations of the AMA was not published in their own magazine. To me this is still a sign of the “bunker” mentality the AMA has always exhibited. I guess old habits die hard. Bobby Nevola Upper Nyack, New York FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39217~ ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39219~ ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39218~ I just finished reading the second part of your interview with Rob Dingman. OMG! No wonder the AMA is losing members, and he blames it almost totally on the Nationwide Insurance discount! How did this person ever get into this position in the first place? And his justification is that membership is not down as much (on a percentage basis) as the motorcycle industry in general. Again…OMG! Rob, check this out. There are what…20 million licensed motorcyclists in this country. And your organization represents 300,000 of them. And you’re proud of that? Talk about low performance, and even lower expectations. I can only hope that you’re not getting one of those Wall Street salaries. And citing the roadside assistance program as a value? One last time…OMG! My purchase of that service was one of the reasons I finally left the AMA, especially after letting the phone ring for 40 minutes when I was stuck on in a parking lot. Here’s a thought. How about hiring someone who really does increase membership year over year, and is paid according to meeting organizational goals like…oh I don’t know…increasing membership 10% year over year and retaining that membership. The bottom line is Rob Dingman is part of the problem, not part of the solution. I still haven’t heard or seen a release of any details of the sale of the AMA racing properties to DSG. Why not? If you’re an organization focused on the members, why wouldn’t they want to know that? What is there to hide? I have expressed a blunt opinion several times in letters to this magazine, and they have never been published. I know that Road Racing World has very close ties to the AMA, and some of the RRW staff may still be on the board of directors. I don’t seriously believe this time will be any different. Craig DeChantal Chaska, Minnesota FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39217~ ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39219~ ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39218~ Thank you for posting the informative interview of the AMA’s Rob Dingman. It is refreshing to finally have Dingman allowed to speak in his own words rather than just be the subject of name-calling, as he has been in some other media outlets. But I am confused by some of his answers, particularly regarding the ongoing forced charges of AMA membership dues to racers and others. I have been trying to understand this peculiarity for years and now, with the DMG involved, it’s even more confusing. This ongoing controversy could be more damaging to the AMA brand than anything else in how it creates an underlying image of deception. Back when the “AMA” “owned” Pro Racing, trying to figure out who really owned it was a bit like playing a shell game. That’s because there were three AMAs, as it was eventually explained to me by an AMA representative. I doubt many racers or AMA members ever knew this. One AMA was the not-for-profit (NFP) membership organization, one was the not-for-profit museum, and one was the for-profit Pro Racing. This representative also informed me that the 501(c) NFP status of the two AMA NFP organizations differed. Nonetheless, being granted any NFP status is never a free lunch because, in essence, any NFP organization is functioning on the backs of every USA tax-paying citizen. Because of that, no NFP is allowed to operate behind closed doors like a private, tax-paying corporation does; the business dealings of NFPs are required to be disclosed to its members and the government. When the AMA set up its Pro Racing as a private corporation this new corporation was not a standalone entity owned by investors. According to the AMA, the sole owner of Pro Racing was the AMA NFP membership organization; a for-profit owned by a not-for-profit. Since the sole owner of AMA Pro Racing was this NFP membership organization, one might think that its business must have been open to membership scrutiny. Well, maybe it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t. I asked the AMA a number of times for access to the content of Pro Racing’s minutes and was refused, being told that it was a private for-profit corporation and so its business dealings were private, forget that it was owned by a not-for-profit. Solely. I am not an NFP lawyer so I am not a qualified authority on the intricacies of NFP law. Nonetheless, it seems obviously impossible for a not-for-profit to fulfill its disclosure requirements while operating a for-profit company whose business practices it refuses to disclose. What’s even more intriguing than that is, if AMA Pro Racing had no accountability to its true owners, just who did it have accountability to? The AMA had created a private corporation by using not-for-profit funds, and then set up the management structure of that corporation in such a way that it was beholden to no one. Also, according to Dingman in your interview, during some years Pro Racing lost money — lost money that in essence belonged to you and me, the AMA NFP members so it seems additionally inappropriate that AMA members were not allowed to view or question the business of Pro Racing. But Dingman says in your interview that he is unclear about the laws of disclosure for NFPs. Just for fun, lets pretend for a moment that AMA Pro Racing was a private company and was justified doing business just like private companies do. But if that was true, why was every racer wishing to do business with this private company forced to buy a membership in the AMA NFP membership organization. When questioning this, I suggested that I knew of no other for-profit company that forced people to buy a membership in a not-for-profit organization in order to be allowed to do business with the for-profit company. When I last bought a car I was not forced join the AAA. When I last saw a Clint Eastwood film I was not forced to join the NRA. But the AMA insisted on having it both ways; being a not-for-profit that owned a for-profit that forced its customers to pay dues to its not-for-profit owners whose management of the for-profit was none of your damn business. I have to wonder, if this is legal what’s stopping my power company from shutting off my lights if I don’t join the Catholic Church? The only answer I got from the AMA on any of this was, “we’ll get back to you.” In your interview, Dingman states that everyone at the time saw this forced membership dues as a tax to go racing. But if it was a tax, since when can a company charge a tax for its own private use? Maybe Dingman is just using the word “tax” as a metaphor for, “shut up and pay us.” Has any of this been resolved? No. Now, according to Dingman in your interview, people desiring to do business with DMG’s motorcycle-racing company are still forced to buy a membership in the AMA NFP, the difference today being the fees are hidden. The dues paid are verifiably existent because they are delivered to the AMA. Dingman refers to these hidden fees as “added value.” I am not a marketing professional but, as a consumer, I’d always been led to believe that an “added value” is a perk you get for no additional cost, that being how it’s value is added to what you are buying. When charges are hidden and you are forced to buy something you may or may not want in order to buy something you do want, that is not an added value, that is an added expense. Is Dingman just using the words “added value” as a metaphor for “shut up and pay us?” According to Dingman, with these current forced memberships, people doing business with DMG are paying the AMA NFP approximately $180,000 a year for having sold Pro Racing to DMG, forcing every participant to supplement the sale of Pro Racing to DMG. I look forward to Dingman clarifying how forcing racers to pay dues for the AMA’s benefit is also for the racers’ benefit, and is fair. And legal. Meanwhile, I commend Dingman for having disclosed this unusual deal. The point is, there is little that can damage a not-for-profit as badly as the loss of its members’ confidence. By forcing racers to support the NFP that owned the company that owned Pro Racing, and then operating Pro Racing covertly without an oversight of equitable ethics, the AMA itself established a long history of self-inflicted brand damage. Now that the AMA has signed a deal with DMG that forces racers to pay for AMA membership, in perpetuity, the AMA has extended its undermining of members’ confidence into perpetuity”¦ forever and ever. Guidebooks for NFP management preach over and over that, to be successful, an NFP must establish a personality of openness and fairness: disclosure and honesty. Unlike within the cultures of business or politics, NFP’s can fail if they try to polish or spin. For NFPs, open is open and honest is honest and contrasts are vivid. There appears to be a whole history here that still hasn’t been disclosed. I hope to see more informative interviews like this in the future. Peter Jones AMA Life Member Hendersonville, North Carolina FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: ~https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=39235~ Somebody at Ohlins (when they did their press release) forgot the “e” in “Brad Lackey””¦. Come on, get your 1970s and 1980s motocross history straight, would ya? Jonathan Umfleet Newberg, Oregon