
Ideally, donations would be ready to ride and could be matched with requests without the bike ever physically going through our organization. Though we had a few such stories – the vast majority of our 104 official matches either needed repairs, needed to get dropped off before a match could be made, or for other reasons needed us to facilitate taking the bikes in.
In the early days of the program, we had ample storage space and a group of volunteers interested in helping repair bikes. With our storage across the street from our office, we were able to facilitate a Bike Match repair day – and took in abandoned bikes from Tulane PD.
We were able to start strong and get a good amount of momentum thanks to this effort, but we soon after lost this storage space and had to pair down on donations – returning to relying on individual donations.
During the years, New Orleans was on top of the leaderboard of the Bike Match Network. We matched nearly 1/3 of the total matches on the platform. We recorded 104 total matches, with the next closest organization matching 75. The ratio of our successful matches to requests was awe-inspiring. It was really a great program to help run and I feel like we were set up for success. New Orleans is small enough that a donation from one side of town can be matched on the other side of town. Bikes are a viable transportation for just about anyone in the city. I have mechanic skills and experience with RUBARB (which taught me how to mismatch bike parts and repair bikes in a way that I could never have learned in a professional shop). But most of all, we were well set up because our community takes care of other community members. I mentioned I personally helped facilitate the majority of our matches, and I can speak specifically to how grateful people would be upon receiving their bicycle.
Though we tried to elicit a sponsorship and applied for a few grants, we were never able to secure any dedicated funds for the program itself. We did receive some much appreciated funds from people that donated bikes. Though this was often just enough to cover the parts and labor needed for the repairs, others were very grateful and generous enough to offset costs of additional matches.
We had officially ended our program at the beginning of this year – removing it from our website, ceasing promotions, and not dedicating funds to the program – after 4 years it was just not something we could afford to continue to dedicate our time to. However, the network was still up and I’d often receive inquiries for donations through Bike Easy and my job at Dashing Bikes. I continued to take in some donations and repaired and matched them on my own accord. I didn’t get to record every match, and wish I’d had the time to promote all the smiling faces, but it was well over 10 bikes that were matched that weren’t properly recorded on the network.
A few months ago, Lisa reached out with a couple of bikes she wanted to donate from the North Shore. I’d just cleared some room in my house so I decided to coordinate with her to take in her donations. She was very eager to donate her parents bikes that had been sitting for several years. She said she and her parents were excited to see them go to good use. In addition to the bikes, they donated $300. It was a very generous offer and allowed me to repair the bikes, even refurbishing them by removing a lot of rust – and allowed me to dedicate some more hours to BikeMatch – including writing this reflection. I matched the first of the two bikes a week ago, the recipient was so excited. I warned her there was still some rust I wasn’t able to get rid of. When she came to pick it up, she was so excited and kept talking about how beautiful it is. 2 weeks ago a supporter, Sam, reached out to donate a like new bike – I was able to match it last week to someone who was walking an hour to and from work everyday. His coworker drove him to pick up the bike and they were both so elated it was so heart warming to send them off with the bike.
I wanted to share some images from our last matches on the Bike Match Network and share a big thank you to everyone that engaged specifically with this program – the donors, the volunteers, the people that hunted down bikes in need of a new home, and of course to Stephen Braitsch for launching and inviting us to join the Bike Match Network – and to everyone that supported Bike Easy over the past 4 years. It all helped to make sure we could keep matching and make a huge difference to over 100 people in our community.
I’d encourage you to check out the stories page on Bike Match Network’s website while it’s still up to see some of the requests and smiling faces, while it’s still up. And if you’re looking to donate a bike or help get bikes into the hands of those in need – look into RUBARB Bike Co-Op
With love and a lot of appreciation,
David Meza
Community Programs Coordinator
Bike Easy