The Sports Car Club of America™ is exactly that: a club. Run by its members, for its members, the SCCA® works best when members just like you get involved. There are many ways you can make an impact on the Club, from showing up early for event setup to staying late breaking things down. You can toss your hat in for a volunteer leadership role with your Region, or run for an elected position. You likely have met Region leaders, and the Club couldn’t operate without them. Overseeing it all from a global perspective, however, is the National SCCA Board of Directors, and as a member in good standing, you are encouraged to run for a position on that Board. But what is the Board of Directors, and what does it mean to serve on that Board?
Before we get there (with a video that will explain a lot), let’s discuss the structure of SCCA Board of Directors elections.
Election Process
The SCCA is divided into 13 Areas, with each of those Areas having Board representation via an elected official. Elections are held in three-year cycles:
The election cycles back to Areas 3, 4, 9, and 11 for 2029, and so on.
Completed forms get mailed to:
SCCA
Attn: Aimee Thoennes
6620 SE Dwight St.
Topeka, KS 66619
The form can also be emailed to athoennes@scca.com.
The Board’s Role
“BoD members are elected from geographically defined Areas, [and] once elected and seated on the Board, Directors are responsible to serve the entire Club, not their Region, not just their Division or their Area,” SCCA’s Board Chair and Area 2 representative Bob Crawford explained during the Board of Directors session at the 2026 SCCA National Convention. “The entire Club, our governance responsibility, spans the entire SCCA, all programs and all members. This is something that we emphasize during new BoD member orientation each year at our December face-to-face Board meeting.”
Representing the Club as a whole is vital to the success of the organization.
“We talk about this a lot during the board orientation because there might be some misconceptions coming in of what exactly the role is of Directors on the Board,” Crawford explained. “We're not super REs or uber Chief Stewards. We're not substitutes for the Program Boards or the CEO. We are the voice of the membership, representatives of the entire SCCA. We're entrusted to make decisions for the good of the entire SCCA as a whole and ultimately responsible for the sustainability of the SCCA.”
This National Convention session contains more than BoD and Club structure. Crawford also interviewed a few current Board members on their experience.
“I think we all refer to it as drinking from the fire hose – I'm going to call it a whirlwind or a tornado of information,” BoD member Kim Whitener said of her early days on the Board, adding that prep was key since being elected as the Area 7 Director in 2024.
“There’s been a lot of pre-reading,” she said. “I don't think I've read so much in these last 12 months than in my last 12 years at the SCCA – Ops Manual, ByLaws, Board of Directors Handbook. It's been a full year of learning acronyms – every program and Advisory Committee has their own acronym. Understanding who fits in what puzzle piece. And then also jumping in … I joined as Assistant Treasurer, liaison to the RoadRally Board as well as the SEB, which provided a lot of educational experience.”
If you’ve ever considered running for a position on the SCCA Board of Directors, you’ll definitely want to check out this recording of the BoD session from the 2026 SCCA National Convention:
Photo by Jeff Loewe
