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Fastforward to 2023, Bike for Good is now a thriving community hub with two branches. Bike for Good offers a variety of services through its workshops, including refurbishing and reselling thousands of bikes per year, diverting them from landfills and helping provide access to affordable bikes for the public. Alongside bike refurb, the charity also offers a huge host of community engagement programmes to encourage more people to cycle, including women’s and non-binary training sessions, kids’ clubs, and maintenance classes, while also providing Cytech training for mechanics. Despite a decade of success, the charity has been hit hard by the recent cost of living crisis and busines turmoil that has impacted the whole bike trade, forcing Bike for Good to turn to the community to help weather the storm.
Community campaign
Kinsman-Chauvet, the charity’s CEO (which stands for ‘cycling enthusiast officer’), recently sat down with BikeBiz to explain the recent crowdfunding campaign. “It’s been difficult,” he said. “We have three sources of income, we’re impacted everywhere. “People give fewer donations; normal sales, workshops, trading income is reduced.
“There was lots of help during the pandemic, but sales in the UK of bikes is back to pre-pandemic level, so we’re kind of back to zero here.” While bike sales have been declining fast in the post- Covid months, the cost of living crisis sparked (in-part) by war in Ukraine has made trading conditions tough for most businesses.
The Covid bike boom has now come crashing down, while increasing fuel and energy prices have squeezed spending for consumers. In response to these challenges, Bike for Good launched a crowdfunding campaign in the hopes of raising £15,000 to help bolster the business through its most challenging period. The campaign was met by enormous support from the community, raising more than £23,000 from 228 supporters since the start of November. “As you know for bike shops, because of Brexit and the cost of living crisis, we’ve been struggling a lot,” said Kinsman-Chauvet.
“But what we need is not only donations, but we need people to buy from us, buy from their local bike shop, to buy from social enterprises. “That’s why we are struggling, because people buy online. But if you’re buying local, you don’t need to donate, because it keeps people in jobs.”
Making a difference
While the money is of course a huge help to sustaining the business, Kinsman-Chauvet also highlighted the comments left by donors, detailing how Bike for Good has helped change their lives. “Bikes for good have helped me so much that now I use
my bike for most of my journeys. From affordable servicing, second hand parts, and trustworthy advice. You’ve kept me on the road! Hope we can keep you going in return so you can keep getting Glasgow pedalling,” said one commenter. “I sincerely hope my small contribution can make a difference. As this organisation does and has made a difference to so many people,” said another.
Kinsman-Chauvet said:
“We realised that actually the crowdfunding is a way for people to say ‘Bike for Good, we’re here for you, you helped change our lives.’ I want to cry when I see these comments.” “Can we have a crowdfunder every couple of months, just without the money?” he joked. Bike for Good has three main sources of income - donations, income from sales, and grants - and as a social enterprise any profits must be reinvested back
The charity recently added Cytech training to its service off ering
20 | March 2023
www.bikebiz.com
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