20 Years with BfW

As Bikes for the World prepares to celebrate 20 years we took a look back over the last 10 years to see how we've grown and where we hope to be heading. In the fall of 2014 we donated our 100,000th bike during our 10 year celebration. We expect to donate our 200,000th bike THIS month, and the timing in relation to our 20 year party, is delayed and deliberate. 

We spend a lot of time sharing numbers with you. How many bikes we collected. How many bikes fit into a container. How many bikes we donate annually. How many volunteers we joined forces with. How many hours they worked. It's exciting, tangible math. It's also a quick, easy way to share our progress with you. But it really doesn't capture the essence of what we are trying to do and how we want to make an impact. 

We sat down with Taylor Jones, our Executive Director, to get his take on what the numbers mean (or don't capture) and how Bikes for the World is truly making an impact globally. We focused on how the organization has changed over the past 10 years and how those changes have helped improve our work, locally and around the world. 

Back in 2015 Taylor was our Operations Manager. He was responsible for all the bike pick ups (like from bike shops and condos). He covered the weekend collections, often three in one day. He packed all the bikes in the containers and assisted with volunteers. He would eventually assume the responsibility of working directly with the partners and helping to set up the shipments. It was a lot. 

When he took over as Executive Director in 2018 the Bikes for the World team felt depleted. We had been operating beyond capacity out of the back room of bike shop, after losing all of our warehouse space in 2016. We managed to keep going without a hitch in our program, but the toll on staff was enormous. 

Landing the warehouse space in Rockville was a huge boost. We got settled and made a few adjustments to make it a more productive space. The biggest plus was that the office and warehouse would finally, after 15 years, be in the same location. Operations Manager, Bob Leftwich really took on a pivotal role of transforming the warehouse into a workable, sustainable environment. From there the organization took off. Taylor picked out some of the core changes he's seen over the past 10 years:

1. Quality. The quality of what we are providing our partners is so much better than it used to be. That is directly connected to our current location and having a better and more varied set of volunteers. Having a stable, permanent location that is welcoming to work in has allowed us to actively recruit and retain volunteers. Combining the office and warehouse space has also opened up our ability to offer more volunteer opportunities to both individual volunteers and groups. 
2. Community Engagement. Montgomery County is such a great fit for us, and we are so happy to be back. The community here is engaged and supportive of our work. Volunteers often return week after week and donors are eager to come inside and see the operation. Losing King Farm was a significant hit to our volunteer base and being back in Rockville...in a comfortable, heated space, with running water...well it speaks for itself. 
3. Volunteers. This is just an echo of what we said above, but we are in such a better place with volunteers now than we were in Pentagon City. We have a welcoming place for folks to come, our location has broadened our volunteer catchment area, and we have a place where staff are regularly working. There is no way we could manage what we do without the assistance of our volunteers. So far this year we've already welcomed over 1,000 volunteers both here and on location and collectively they have worked nearly 4,000 hours. That's nearly equal to staff time...for the entire year! We've also transformed our volunteer program to incorporate more school groups making them a more central and recurring aspect of what we do here and how we activate this space. 
4. Stability. We've gotten to a point of stability and regularity over the past decade; much of that is having a set address where we were able to set down roots and create a home. We have a more set schedule for staff and volunteers during the week and that's helped us be more efficient. In turn, it's why our quality has increased so dramatically over the past decade. All the factors combined have allowed us to become more efficient and produce a better product for our partners. 
5. Recycle/Reuse. We are doing so much more stripping/salvaging parts than we used to. That has helped us divert more stuff from the trash AND allowed us to provide targeted replenishments of spare parts to our partners. It also provides a rewarding, engaging volunteer opportunity to students during school visits. It's teaching them a skill and getting them to work together to solve problems- a core part of our mission.
6. Board Growth. We have a more capable and engaged Board (on higher level strategic issues) than we did in the past. We are relying less on them for doing the heavy lifting and more on their specialized skills to guide us to success. The evolution of the Board has coincided with the evolution of the organization.
   

And yes 200k bikes is a big milestone. We are excited to see it and we will celebrate that with you. But it's not reaching that number that is important...it's that the bike reaches an individual and improves their life. We are after all, Changing Lives ONE Bike at a Time. Our goal is to bring that story to you in October when we officially celebrate 20 years. We are in a much better place, organizationally, to think about impact first and 'numbers' second. There is so much more to success than just numbers and now we are in a better place to actually capture that and tell people what it means.