I struggled with this same issue. We get donations that sometimes are not even recognizable as bikes, and they are occasionally left at the door while we aren't around.
I have started to ask people to hang on to donations until we create some space. However, I never turn down a bike that is delivered to us. If there are items that we do not want, they should be clearly identified in the request for bike donations. Once they make the trip, I feel an obligation to take it and thank them for their effort.
Here are a couple things that we are either doing or trying to set up to better manage junk bike donations:
-We promote Bike Round-Ups. They are one-day events where we take in a lot of donations, sort and strip them, and get scrap removed before anything goes in the building. It is volunteer-intensive, but prevents growth in the pile of bikes we never seem to get to.
-We sell junk bikes to the scrap metal dealer. Sounds like policies vary across the country, but we have been able to dump unlimited un-stripped bikes, and sometimes get a nice check back for our efforts.
-We coordinate with Goodwill. They are willing to accept bike donations on our behalf. It allows us to offer more supervised donation drop-off hours without having to staff our facility. The only thing we need to do is get them down the street to our shop.
-We offer bikes as materials for local artists. We haven't done a lot with this yet, but we have been trying to encourage bike-related art by offering bike parts and use of tools to local artists. We did get a cool bike rack built this way.
-We give the scrap away. A couple people already suggested giving it to scrappers. If just setting the pile out back doesn't work, a posting to the "free" section of Craigslist should do the trick.
Hope that helps!
Scott TenBrink Executive Director Fitness Council of Jackson 225 North Jackson St. Jackson, MI 49201 (517) 990-9798 scott@fitnesscouncil.org www.fitnesscouncil.org
-----Original Message----- From: thethinktank-bounces@bikecollectives.org [mailto:thethinktank-bounces@bikecollectives.org] On Behalf Of Mark Rehder Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:45 PM To: The Think Tank Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] rejecting trash bikes
Over 12 years I don't think we've turned any away at our door, but it
can certainly be an issue. For instance, our partner org. once went
with a truck to pick up about 60 bikes and came back with 20, having
told the donors to take the other 40 directly to scrap.
The two metal recyclers here want seats and tires off at the very
least, so we have to do that. We also remove the pedals if we can,
as they snag everything when trying to pull the scrap pile apart and
drag stuff up to the truck (our scrap pile, which volume-wise is
about the size of a panel truck, is in our basement,)
I too would like to hear how other orgs. handle this. We find that
newbie volunteers seem to love taking bikes apart, so we're able to
cope with it.
Now, crappy little kids bikes, that's another issue... Currently
we're leaving some in our back alley, hoping they'll disappear (and
they often do) before we bring them inside. Fortunately our landlord
does not seem to mind this.
Mark Rehder - General Manager re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op http://re-cycles.ca
On 12-Aug-09, at 8:15 PM, Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE wrote:
hey folks,
a moral or social dilemma: when your shop accepts donations of used
bikes, but you're already filled to the gills with hundreds of
bikes that may or may not ever get fixed up, how do you begin to
turn away donations that are really not worth the space? or do
you? just looking for some suggestions of how other shops have
dealt with this issue. it gets to the point where we don't have
the time, space, or man-power to strip down all those
pieces-of-crap even to send to the scrap yard, but now that people
know that we accept used bikes, it's hard to know how to say no.thanks!
sarah
Urban Bike Project of Wilmington -a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop- 1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the
building) Wilmington, DE 19802Hours: Thursday 6:30-9:00 Saturday 1:00-4:00
Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org
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