Replacing Stolen Bikes: Free Bikes 4 Kidz Does so Much so Well! With Your Help, Striving for 10,000 Bike Give-Aways!

Jesse is like a lot of our bike recipients in that she uses her bike to earn a living. Sadly, her bike was stolen last week. She came in with someone from a nonprofit that she receives services from and we got her back on the road.

We are getting a lot of visits from those in need about receiving bikes outside of our typical bike giveaway season in April and May. Since we have our centrally located bike shop for the time being (it will be torn down at some point), we are able to stay open year-round. So this process developed organically as people have been steadily coming through our doors throughout the summer in need of bikes. The demand for low-cost transportation continues to increase and we are doing our best to keep up.

We just added information on the FAQ page of our website under “Want to receive a bike?” with our new process for receiving a bike outside of the giveaway season. 

This process will help us manage the steady stream of requests as we offer bike repair services to help fund our program. Unfortunately, we had people taking advantage of our free bikes program. This is why we work with nonprofit partners who tell us who our recipients will be. We do not have the infrastructure in place to vet bike recipients. The new process includes bike hopefuls providing us with a letter from someone at a charitable nonprofit organization that they receive services from. 

It costs us $135 to provide a bicycle, helmet, and accessories to one individual. If you feel like these are valuable services that you’d like to see continue, please donate so someone can receive a bike!

We have great news! All financial donations will be matched for double the impact thanks to local philanthropist, Joan Collins. Joan has provided $5,000 to help us meet our goal of raising $20,050 so we can give away 150 bikes to meet our 10,000 bikes given away goal by the end of the year. 

Miigwech/Thank you to all of you who share our passion, Kristie GoForth, Executive Director

Help Free Bikes Four Kidz Reach its 10,000 Free Bike Give-Away Goal! Go to:

fb4kmadison.networkforgood.com/projects

DONATE TODAY  Our Back to School Sale is Still On! We have a great selection of commuter bikes available for sale for back-to-school! All bikes are priced at $100! If you already have a bike but it needs some fine-tuning, head over to the FB4K workshop Monday-Friday between 9:30 am-3 pm and we’ll get you on the road. All proceeds will help fund our bike giveaway program. Tuneups, flat repairs, and brake adjustments are a few of the basic services we are offering and our turnaround time is great! Your purchase of a bike or paying for a bike repair helps see that our bike giveaway program can continue and is greatly appreciated!   Visit our shop at 354 Coyier Lane, Madison, WI 53713 Monday-Friday • 9:30 am-3 pm. Bike Shop phone: (608) 405-0385Read the Frequently Asked Questions on our website. ~SAVE THE DATE~FALL BIKE DONATION DRIVE Saturday, September 30 • 9 am-2 pm It’s that time again when we start collecting the bikes you’ve outgrown or decided to part with. On Saturday, September 30 from 9 am-2 pm, we will be hosting our first bike donation drive of the season! Our hopes are to collect 400 donated bicycles on this day. We’ll spend the winter refurbishing them with the help of numerous volunteers like you. Then in the spring, we’ll give them to folks who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to own and enjoy all the benefits a bike provides.   Gently used bikes of all sizes and styles are accepted. Bikes that cannot be saved can be dropped off with a $20 disposal donation. Bring bike donations to the FB4K bike shop in south Madison at 354 Coyier Lane, Madison, WI 53713 near Rimrock & the Beltline. If you are unable to make it on these dates, please bring your bikes when it’s convenient for you Monday-Friday between 9:30-3 p.m. to the FB4K workshop at 354 Coyier Lane.  We are doing things a little differently this fall because we have a centrally located bike shop now. So we are asking that you bring us your unwanted bikes rather than us renting a fleet of trucks and recruiting 40 volunteers to help us collect them in areas around the city. On November 4, we’ll be doing our second bike donation drive and we may consider hosting some satellite locations in Verona, Sun Prairie, and Middleton if we do not meet our goal of 400 bikes collected on 9/30.  If you live in an apartment complex and see unused bikes at your bike rack, please mention this opportunity to clear them out to your property manager. We’d love to refurbish them and save them from being thrown away or destroyed by snow plows! MINOCQUA BIKE DONATION DRIVE! If you haven’t heard, we are hosting a bike donation drive in Minocqua on 9/16 & 9/17 at Minocqua Brewing Company! Bikes collected will be distributed to the Lac du Flambeau Tribe. If you have friends and/or family in the area, please share this news with them.  LEARN MORE We’re in the News! Madison Magazine featured Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison recently with a great article by Anna Kottakis. If you didn’t get a chance to read the article, they did a wonderful job overviewing our program, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. Giving bikes to the Lac du Flambeau Tribe in northern Wisconsin is mentioned in the article and we are honored to be able to help others in our state with your help and support. 80-90% of our bikes stay in Dane County but due to the generosity of Dane County citizens, we are able to provide help to others outside of Dane County. We are also prepping to start our workforce training program teaching bike mechanics through our Bike Shop program with an area middle school. We hear a lot of talk about supporting the trades but bike mechanics are rarely mentioned in those conversations. Bike mechanics are and always will be in high demand in our bike-friendly area so it’s important that we do our part to provide opportunities to grow more mechanics by starting young. READ THE ARTICLE Fleet Services AvailableEach year, some schools request a fleet of bikes from us. Some schools offer bike safety classes in the spring but not all kids have a bike meaning they are excluded. One way we help workaround this is by offering schools a fleet of bikes to have on hand when this situation occurs. Fleets can be as few as five bikes or as many as 25. Storage space is often the limiting factor. If you work or volunteer at a public school and have one of our fleets, we are now offering fleet repair services for a low-cost fee. Bikes, like any other mode of transportation, need continuous maintenance to be in safe usable condition.  Please contact us by email for a quote if your fleet needs to be repaired prior to your bike safety class. If you’d like to discuss this option, please call the bike shop at 608-405-0385 to talk with our professional mechanics about your needs.  Another happy bike recipient!