Re: [TheThinkTank] New community cycleworks need top tips!
Good point. We have a "NO BUY" policy too
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----- Reply message ----- From: "Affordable Bikes Re-Cyclery" affordablebikesrecyclery@gmail.com To: "The Think Tank" thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org Subject: [TheThinkTank] New community cycleworks need top tips! Date: Wed, Oct 17, 2012 09:29 Our (new, similar) project is located in a low-income neighborhood. We opened in the late summer -- so, after the heavy sales season -- but we find that we receive far more requests from people for us to buy bikes from them than for them to buy bikes from us. We could go broke buying bikes. This has fortified our "no buying bikes" policy, toward which we were already leaning. It also keeps us from strengthening the stolen bikes business, and protects us from the ire of stolen bikes victims.
On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Stewart Vanns stewartvanns@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
We are in the process of setting up a community cycle project in south east London, Uk. I just wondered if you guys & gals could pop down 3 top tips you learnt in your set up phase to help us avoid the common pitfalls. We are planning to build a not for profit enterprise, with a 5 year business plan, focusing on recycling donated bikes, repairing bikes and doing this with young people and young adults.
The bikes will be given to trainees or sold very cheaply to local residents of low income. We also plan to do outreach work at local schools to educate children in basic cycle maintenance. We have funding, a venue and a steady flow of interested people. Thanks in advance, Stewart
Burgess community cycleworks.
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Shop tips from Community Cycles, Boulder Colorado
*"Flatten" you bikes when they're donated. * Flattening a bike has two steps 1) remove the pedals and tie them to the frame with twine 2) turn the handlebars 90 degrees and re-tighten the stem.
This takes the bike from about 24 inches wide to about 6 inches. The bikes are then easy to stack in a horizontal pile by alternating front and rear. This also helps prevent "bike sex" where the pedal of one bike gets caught in the spokes of a neighbor and becomes a intertwined, it often takes more than a bucket of water to get them to separate. Flattened bikes are much easier to transport in an automobile as well. We pick up monthly bike donations from the police and we flatten them as we put them in the van.
*Organize your parts!* Thanks to Free Ride in Pittsburgh at Bike! Bike! 2008(?) we learned how to color code our parts. I think there are pictures of their system on the wiki but how it works is various component groups are stored in colored containers. So at our shop all the drive train parts; pedals, cranks, chain rings chains, cassettes, and freewheels are stored in pink colored containers. I think we have 5 different colors for; brakes, drive train, shifters & derailleurs, saddles and posts, wheels, forks and handle bars, accessories. To help people navigate the system we have a key or legend bike that we painted to correspond. You can see a photo of our setup on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151018594076605&set=a.10151018...
*Organize your tools into work stations* For the first 4 years of being around we had one single workbench in the shop. The 4X8 pegboard was well laid out and had good tracings of where tools belong but we had a half a dozen of each tool; 3 way allen, box wrenches 8mm - 19mm, crank pullers, screwdrivers and so on. All the tools were there in one place and we'd have 20 people there trying to use them and the bench itself. It really set the stage for a chaotic situation. People would take the tools away from the bench to work on their bike which we didn't have stands for so they'd be working on the ground. This resulted in tools laying around all over the place, back then you could spend 15 mins trying to find a 15mm box wrench.
We eventually got it together and created dedicated work stations with the exact same tool set and pegboard layout at each location. The change this made in the shop was epic! Instead of wading through a mess and fighting for resources you could come to the shop and actually do bike mechanics. It gave us a better sense of our capacity and how many people we could actually serve and provide quality service to. Our Earn-A-Bike program immediately improved and was a great foundation to build other systems around. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151122493866605&set=a.10151018...
*Read the Wiki, Participate on the Think Tank, come to Bike! Bike!* We've been doing this for about 7 years now and things are starting to gel for us. Over that time this list serve the wiki and Bike! Bike! have been by far the most valuable resources in developing our organization. When I talk to folks who are interested in starting a bike coop in their community I start by saying it needs to be a reflection of your community and it's needs.
We all have one thing in common, collecting bikes, from there the way we run our organizations varies quite a bit. There are long standing all volunteer run orgs and others that are completely run by staff and everything in between. Some are getting free rent others are supported by a corporate sponsors. Some are hardcore about keeping everything free for their clients others are run like a business.
There are a lot of tips and tricks you can find in these resources but you'll need to find out which ones are right for your situation.
We've been to three Bike! Bike!s over the years and each one has been an potent injection of inspiration, I highly recommend it. I think next one will be in New Orleans next year but I don't think they've set a date yet. http://www.bikebike.org/
Best of luck.
Ride On! Rich
On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 9:40 AM, summitcyclingcenter@yahoo.com < summitcyclingcenter@yahoo.com> wrote:
Good point. We have a "NO BUY" policy too
Sent from my HTC EVO Design™ 4G from Boost Mobile
----- Reply message ----- From: "Affordable Bikes Re-Cyclery" affordablebikesrecyclery@gmail.com To: "The Think Tank" thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org Subject: [TheThinkTank] New community cycleworks need top tips! Date: Wed, Oct 17, 2012 09:29
Our (new, similar) project is located in a low-income neighborhood. We opened in the late summer -- so, after the heavy sales season -- but we find that we receive far more requests from people for us to buy bikes from them than for them to buy bikes from us. We could go broke buying bikes. This has fortified our "no buying bikes" policy, toward which we were already leaning. It also keeps us from strengthening the stolen bikes business, and protects us from the ire of stolen bikes victims.
On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Stewart Vanns stewartvanns@gmail.comwrote:
Hi, We are in the process of setting up a community cycle project in south east London, Uk.
I just wondered if you guys & gals could pop down 3 top tips you learnt in your set up phase to help us avoid the common pitfalls.
We are planning to build a not for profit enterprise, with a 5 year business plan, focusing on recycling donated bikes, repairing bikes and doing this with young people and young adults.
The bikes will be given to trainees or sold very cheaply to local residents of low income.
We also plan to do outreach work at local schools to educate children in basic cycle maintenance.
We have funding, a venue and a steady flow of interested people.
Thanks in advance,
Stewart Burgess community cycleworks.
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Rich Points -
summitcyclingcenter＠yahoo.com