Community Cycles doesn't rent bikes at all, but we do get asked often if we do. The alternative we have I think is a decent one, although to my knowledge, no one's ever taken us up on it:

Buy one of our bikes (most bikes we have for sale are between $100 and $200.) Use it as long as you'd like, bring it back whenever, and donate it back to us, no strings attached, no worries about damage, etc. For a day use bike, it doesn't compare with other local shops that have bike rentals. For longer than a few days, the math is in their favor to buy and donate back versus renting a bike.

Interesting to see how others are doing it.

josh.

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Richard Dugas direction@velogik.orgwrote:

Hi there,

We have tried an alternative way of "renting" bikes. We offer to buy back bicycles that we sell if people come in looking for a rental or tell us they are only in the city for a few months. What we do is we sell them a bicycle, and then agree on a scheme to buy back the bicycle, assuming it's in good condition, at a price that will be reduced with the time that they keep it: 60% within a mo nth, 50% 1-5 months and 40% 6 months plus. We obviously write all this down for the client.

This simplifies the arrangement as they are responsible for the bicycle since they have bought it. That being said, our bicycles are covered by our 3 month guarantee. So the customer has little to worry about. When they bring back the bicycle, we can sell it again the next year for about the same price as we sold it (after all the work and parts that need to be changed) in the first place. Furthermore, the bicycle has been road proven so that we sell it with renewed confidence in the product.

In our experience so far, most people don't bring back the bikes, so they count as a pure sale. Those that do are very happy with the product and the arrangement and the few dollars that fall back into their hands.

Richard - Vélogik in Montréal

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Corey Grazul cgrazul@gmail.com wrote:

...

I'm sure the topic of bike rental has been discussed here before, but if anyone has a link, personal experience, or just some solid advice to share, I'd really appreciate it.

I am part of a non-profit community bike shop in Jackson, MI and we are looking into starting a bike rental service through our shop to get more people riding and to generate a bit of income to resource our work. The primary purpose of our rental will be recreation, not transportation.

What I'm looking for are some starting points in the insurance/liability/waiver arena. What are my choices, what is most cost effective, what are some specific companies worth looking into, should I just look into a rider for our current insurance, does anyone have a good template waiver to share, etc...?

Any other info. about starting a bike rental service would be super helpful.

Thanks, Corey Grazul The Fitness Council of Jackson

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:11 PM, < thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> wrote:

...

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Chris Wells)
2. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Scott Gibson)

---

Message: 1 Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:20:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Chris Wells re-cycles@rogers.com To: The Think Tank thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work Message-ID: 510696.86702.qm@web88207.mail.re2.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

At re-Cycles we decided since (at the time) all of our labour was volunteer that we should only consider paying wages for a service that we we unable to accomplish with volunteer labour. So far we have applied this to?4 services. ?

1. Day to day contact with other organizations and media which tends to

occur during 9-5 weekdays. Most of our senior volunteer resources have full time jobs which make them unavailable weekdays. ? 2) We needed to find a new shop location, move and incorporate. Arranging all that was a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate. ? 3) Corrdinating the day-to-day running of the organization and doing all the stuff that no volunteers offered to do in a timely manner. Again a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate. ? 4) Extending our hours to days and weekends. We were getting overwhelmed on the evenings we were open as well as getting many requests to be open outside of our evening hours. We knew from past experience we did not have any senior volunteers available/willing to work days or weekends so we decided to offer some paid hours. ? Services 1-3 ended up being combied into a Director's Honararium allowing Mark to dedicate the hours required to accomplish those tasks. The need for service 4 is reviewed twice a year. Thus far no volunteers have come forward to work those shifts and the work accomplished has relieved some of the pressure from the evening shifts while also proving to be revenue positive (after paying the wages).

Chris Wells (Email Handler & one of many Volunteer Head Mechanics)

re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op 473 Bronson Ave. Ottawa info@re-cycles.ca http://www.re-cycles.ca/

--- On Sun, 4/11/10, Ainsley Naylor needleandthread@gmail.com wrote:

From: Ainsley Naylor needleandthread@gmail.com Subject: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work To: thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Date: Sunday, April 11, 2010, 10:55 AM

Hey folks We have been avoiding the very loaded *paid position* conversation for about 2 years here at Pirates. As we are getting even busier than every before, and making more than enough money to cover our operation costs, I think it is time to start hashing out various ideas for ways to pay for certain tasks to be done.

I don't think we are in the market to have a paid coordinator or shop manager, as it would be too likely to lead to authoritarian issues and would take up too much of our extra cash. Do folks have suggestions or examples of small-scale employment or honorarium models that have worked for them?

To give you a guideline let's talk about paying out less than $600 a month.

thanks! ainsley.

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

---

Thethinktank mailing list Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org To unsubscribe, send a blank email to TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org To manage your subscription, plase visit:

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at this years bike bike in Torotno, we will be asking people to loan un there bike for one weekend. Creating a temperary sharing of bikes for incomming visitors. This method has worked...,

also look under bike lending library

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Mark Rehder mark@drumbent.com wrote:

Yeah, same thing with re-Cycles.

Our steel-wheel bikes start at $40, and we make sure they work. We always get people who are in town for a few months (Ottawa has a large transient pop. of people doing gov't. or embassy work) and they need a cheap bike. So they get one for $40-50 and donate it back when they are done. Good deal for them, and most times we only have to put air in the tires or adjust a few things.

Mark Rehder - General Manager

re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op http://re-cycles.ca

On 18-Apr-10, at 10:10 AM, veganboyjosh@gmail.com wrote:

Community Cycles doesn't rent bikes at all, but we do get asked often if

...

we do. The alternative we have I think is a decent one, although to my knowledge, no one's ever taken us up on it:

Buy one of our bikes (most bikes we have for sale are between $100 and $200.) Use it as long as you'd like, bring it back whenever, and donate it back to us, no strings attached, no worries about damage, etc. For a day use bike, it doesn't compare with other local shops that have bike rentals. For longer than a few days, the math is in their favor to buy and donate back versus renting a bike.

Interesting to see how others are doing it.

josh.

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Richard Dugas direction@velogik.org wrote: Hi there,

We have tried an alternative way of "renting" bikes. We offer to buy back bicycles that we sell if people come in looking for a rental or tell us they are only in the city for a few months. What we do is we sell them a bicycle, and then agree on a scheme to buy back the bicycle, assuming it's in good condition, at a price that will be reduced with the time that they keep it: 60% within a mo nth, 50% 1-5 months and 40% 6 months plus. We obviously write all this down for the client.

This simplifies the arrangement as they are responsible for the bicycle since they have bought it. That being said, our bicycles are covered by our 3 month guarantee. So the customer has little to worry about. When they bring back the bicycle, we can sell it again the next year for about the same price as we sold it (after all the work and parts that need to be changed) in the first place. Furthermore, the bicycle has been road proven so that we sell it with renewed confidence in the product.

In our experience so far, most people don't bring back the bikes, so they count as a pure sale. Those that do are very happy with the product and the arrangement and the few dollars that fall back into their hands.

Richard - Vélogik in Montréal

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Corey Grazul cgrazul@gmail.com wrote: I'm sure the topic of bike rental has been discussed here before, but if anyone has a link, personal experience, or just some solid advice to share, I'd really appreciate it.

I am part of a non-profit community bike shop in Jackson, MI and we are looking into starting a bike rental service through our shop to get more people riding and to generate a bit of income to resource our work. The primary purpose of our rental will be recreation, not transportation.

What I'm looking for are some starting points in the insurance/liability/waiver arena. What are my choices, what is most cost effective, what are some specific companies worth looking into, should I just look into a rider for our current insurance, does anyone have a good template waiver to share, etc...?

Any other info. about starting a bike rental service would be super helpful.

Thanks, Corey Grazul The Fitness Council of Jackson

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:11 PM, < thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> wrote: Send Thethinktank mailing list submissions to thethinktank@bikecollectives.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit

http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.o...

or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org

You can reach the person managing the list at thethinktank-owner@bikecollectives.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Thethinktank digest..."

Today's Topics:

1. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Chris Wells)
2. Re: Suggestions for paid work (Scott Gibson)

---

Message: 1 Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:20:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Chris Wells re-cycles@rogers.com To: The Think Tank thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work Message-ID: 510696.86702.qm@web88207.mail.re2.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

At re-Cycles we decided since (at the time) all of our labour was volunteer that we should only consider paying wages for a service that we we unable to accomplish with volunteer labour. So far we have applied this to?4 services. ?

1. Day to day contact with other organizations and media which tends to

occur during 9-5 weekdays. Most of our senior volunteer resources have full time jobs which make them unavailable weekdays. ? 2) We needed to find a new shop location, move and incorporate. Arranging all that was a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate. ? 3) Corrdinating the day-to-day running of the organization and doing all the stuff that no volunteers offered to do in a timely manner. Again a significant effort that needed corrdinating and was beyond the amount of time of any of our senior volunteers was able to donate. ? 4) Extending our hours to days and weekends. We were getting overwhelmed on the evenings we were open as well as getting many requests to be open outside of our evening hours. We knew from past experience we did not have any senior volunteers available/willing to work days or weekends so we decided to offer some paid hours. ? Services 1-3 ended up being combied into a Director's Honararium allowing Mark to dedicate the hours required to accomplish those tasks. The need for service 4 is reviewed twice a year. Thus far no volunteers have come forward to work those shifts and the work accomplished has relieved some of the pressure from the evening shifts while also proving to be revenue positive (after paying the wages).

Chris Wells (Email Handler & one of many Volunteer Head Mechanics)

re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op 473 Bronson Ave. Ottawa info@re-cycles.ca http://www.re-cycles.ca/

--- On Sun, 4/11/10, Ainsley Naylor needleandthread@gmail.com wrote:

From: Ainsley Naylor needleandthread@gmail.com Subject: [TheThinkTank] Suggestions for paid work To: thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Date: Sunday, April 11, 2010, 10:55 AM

Hey folks We have been avoiding the very loaded *paid position* conversation for about 2 years here at Pirates. As we are getting even busier than every before, and making more than enough money to cover our operation costs, I think it is time to start hashing out various ideas for ways to pay for certain tasks to be done.

I don't think we are in the market to have a paid coordinator or shop manager, as it would be too likely to lead to authoritarian issues and would take up too much of our extra cash. Do folks have suggestions or examples of small-scale employment or honorarium models that have worked for them?

To give you a guideline let's talk about paying out less than $600 a month.

thanks! ainsley.

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

---

Thethinktank mailing list Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org To unsubscribe, send a blank email to TheThinkTank-leave@bikecollectives.org To manage your subscription, plase visit:

http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.o...