Encouragement Advocacy Groups
L
ocal advocacy groups are the starting point for those who realize that there are things that need to be done to encourage bicycling in their area. Several local and state advocacy groups are fighting the good fight, improving the conditions for cycling, and setting examples for other groups to learn from.
“2007 was a fantastic year around here. We won a legal challenge protecting the right of the county to protect one of the most used trails in country, the bicycle master plan was adopted, and hundreds of millions were committed to bicycling projects. It was just a good year. The years have gotten better but there were a lot of first in that year.” – Dave Douglas, Event Coordinator, Cascade Bicycle Club
Cascade Bicycle Club
Dave Douglas is the Event Coordinator for the Cascade Bicycle Club (CBC) in Seattle, Wash. Originally CBC was a meeting of recreational riders who wanted an advocacy voice. The CBC is now a three-part organization comprised of two 501(c)4s: Bike Pac and Cascade Bicycle Club (C4), and their 501(c)3 the Education Fund. The fund is a repository for grants and a way to secure charitable donations. Bike to Work Day and Month are operated under the Ed Fund. The Ed Fund provides hundreds of bicycles for classroom programs and teaches more than 10,000 students a year the basics of bicycling.
Action Alert
The CBC is also very unafraid of politics and elections. “We have been very successful at the ballet box,” says Douglas. The CBC has grown into a 13,000 member organization and has mastered the art of keeping their members engaged and active. “We have a very robust approach to timely action alerts, e-newsletters, alerts, and the web,” says Douglas. They offer direct face to face opportunities to engage members in issues that are
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important to them. From a software standpoint they use Democracy in Action and Salsa to tailor their advocacy alerts to the members that want them. “We can have them sign up for what they are interested in, so if they are really interested in vulnerable user law but not county information we do not overload them,” says Douglas. “We try to keep people effectively engaged.”
Operations
CBC is operated by an 11-member volunteer Board of Directors, 22 professional staff, four AmeriCorps members, and thousands of volunteers. “We’re a complicated and unique model,” says Douglas. The CBC started as an advocacy group, so events were not their original source of income. Originally, it was membership, grants and their 501c3 Education Foundation that kept them afloat. Their century, now the CBC’s biggest event, took 20 years to generate substantial revenue and has 20,000 riders. “To date, the lions share of our income is our events,” says Douglas. “Our events take a lot
of staff and volunteers. Our staff size is reflective of how many it takes to get money raised.”
Community and Government Relations
Douglas sits on large advisory committees for funding and transportation financing. He has also worked as co-chair for the bicycle advisory committee, for bridges… ”the list is too long,” says Douglas. He adds that if you are appointed to a committee, you will likely deal be on a committee “where they don’t like what you have to say but you have to remember you are the most well informed in the room.” This selfconfidence has worked for the CBC, as evidenced in the numerous bike infrastructure improvements and