This Saturday, October 5th, Working Bikes, a nonprofit founded by Lee Ravenscroft and Amy Little in 1999, celebrates its 25th anniversary. The group is dedicated to providing bicycles to anyone that needs them, whether it be right here in Chicago or across the globe. Working Bikes has grown exponentially since its foundation, with many volunteers, staff, partners, and supporters. Ahead of the anniversary party, Streetsblog asked Ravenscroft and Little how they feel about this milestone.
"Oh, very proud," said Ravenscroft, "Proud father, proud parent, rather. We've grown. It started with tens of bicycles, and now we're tens of thousands of bicycles. We're doing over 10,000 bikes a year, getting bikes that may or may not have been ever fixed up. So we're saving 10,000 bikes, and we like to think that they're all used by people trying to get to work and back, and get to school and back. Trying to improve their lives."
According to Ravenscroft, they started by buying bikes at the junkyard for $5 before they had a bike shop and started donating them. They began giving bikes 100 at a time to various organizations. In 2002, they started shipping cycles to developing nations in Africa and Latin America.
Nowadays, the nonprofit also runs a full-service bike shop at 2434 S. Western Ave. in Little Village. The store focuses on small repairs and quick adjustments, as opposed to full tune-up services. Ravenscroft said he's proud that the organization was able to buy its own building.
"It's wonderful," said Trevor Clarke, the current executive director of Working Bikes, about the shop existing for a quarter century. "We have been around 25 years now, which is a nice length of time for any nonprofit. And we hope to be around 25, 50, 100 years more." He started out with the organization in 2011 as a volunteer mechanic. Five years ago he became the ED, which was the first time organization has had one.
Working Bikes has a 13-member board of directors, whom Clarke says also function as "super-volunteers." The current board president is Dave Gorman. There are currently 20 staff members.
According to Amy Little, the nonprofit has at least 960 volunteers. "It's fun," she said. "Everybody's kind of like-minded. You're doing it because you want to help other people. You're in it together and fixing bikes or loading bicycles into a container because you feel strongly about it."
As they've done to celebrate their anniversary for the past couple of years, Working Bikes will hold a block party and warehouse party this Saturday, October 5, from 4 - 8 p.m. at 2434 S. Western Ave. Appropriately enough, there will also be bikes for people to ride around the pedestrianized street, plus food, drinks, music, and, for the very first time, a dunk tank. Attendees will be able to make a donation in order to try their luck at dunking some Working Bike staff and board members. The event will also be their main fundraiser of the year, with the goal of raising $100,000, which would be a record for the organization.
Working Bikes is also hoping to set a record for international shipping of bikes. "We're hoping to send over 10,000 bikes to international partners, including adding some new partners," said Clarke. "Hitting 10,000 bikes will be a milestone. We're excited about that. And then giving bikes to, it'll be over 1000 folks around Chicago, including a large number of new arrivals [migrants]. So, we're going through a project right now to help the new arrival community, and have added a Spanish-language volunteer session to help fix bikes for that."
Get tickets for the party and learn about sponsorship opportunities here.
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