If there is a college in the area, Hurry, it is the end of the semester and prime bike collecting season!!! Many students throw away all sorts of things, including their(often rather nice) bicycles. Go to the security office and ask that any bikes left at the campus be collected for you. Also put up some fliers around campus asking students to donate bikes instead of throwing them away.
Also you might try organizing a drive in conjunction with a local church or community group. If you hit a well off neighorhood most of them have bikes sitting in their garage they would love to get rid of.
At Velocipede getting bikes is the least of our troubles!!! We do have trouble getting them built fast enough though, if anyone can give me advice on that it would be appreciated. I'm glad to actually have soemthing to offer to the list, because mostly i just lap up what everyone else has to say. i'm excited for Bike Bike, I hope to come with a contingent from Baltimore and lots of questions!!
-beth Velocipede bike Project baltimore, md
I can coordinate this and get it to be mostly sharing, brainstorming and writing up lists of ideas, discussing what does and does not work. I'll post it on the bike!bike! website. Meanwhile, let's start a list somewhere on the bikecollectives website where we can gather ideas for keeping volunteers. Simple personpower is always one of our biggest problems at The Recyclery as well.
We've mostly done hands-on teaching to try and get people feeling comfortable with the tools, but we combine it with food and fun times (bike-in movies are on the way) and a new "secret" time to use the shop for regular volunteers so they feel like they get a kick-back for their hard work. (This also functions as a casual party-ish time in the shop when we can all hang out and work on our own bikes.)
On another note: can I ask people for more suggestions on where to get bikes? Right now we have a shortage. Our usual avenues are police confiscations, individual donors, apartment buildings storage rooms getting cleaned out. Sometimes we get them from alleyways or scrappers. Do others have ideas for regular avenues of bike donations?
Thanks all! Looking forward to seeing you again/meeting you at Bikebike!, Sharlyn
On 5/15/07, Jessica McPherson jessica_mcp@yahoo.com wrote:
sounds like a good idea for a workshop at bike!bike! I bet it would be a great discussion if different groups all offered their suggestions & experience. Anyone want to coordinate?
-Jessica (Free Ride)
--- Macho Philipovich macho@resist.ca wrote:
we've been having a similar experience at the bike dump. a few folks stuck around from our volunteer workshop series this spring, but not as many as i'd hoped. volunteer pot lucks and special events have worked all right at getting new folks feeling comfortable in the space, in getting older volunteers to come back who haven't been around for a while, and generally helping volunteers to feel appreciated and like the shop is a fun space. but all in all, i think we also need more and better strategies. i'd be really interested in hearing in things others have tried, or even ideas about what else might work.
macho http://bike-dump.ca
rachael spiewak wrote:
hiya, folks.
something sopo's always struggled with is finding
volunteers and
convincing them to stay. many people who visit
our shop would rather
have a hands on demonstration than look up how to
do repairs in our
manuals. we tried having a few bike maintenance
101 classes to get
people feeling like they have the capacity to help
others with basic
repairs, but that didn't stick. does anyone have
ideas or experience
in this department? or is it sufficient for us to
tell people that
reading about repairs in our manuals is part of
their process at our
shop? i tend to doubt the success rate of the
last one. i'm thinking
food incentives might be a good idea.
love/peace/bicyclegrease, rachael
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