Kickstarter

Enormous thanks to everybody who has pledged so far! Absolutely incredible.

Given the high price of airline tickets, $700 only goes part way towards covering the Bike House's presence at Bike!Bike!. Nelle and Mary Lauran (collectively NaryMellon) are foaming-at-the-mouth thrilled to journey to Austin, learn all about ways to support and grow the Bike House, and write about the experience. 

It's not too late to help out the Bike House with this project! Please help us sprint to the finish line next Wednesday. Thank you so much for your support.  

Washington, DC’s Bike House cooperative wants to share knowledge with bicycle coops and nonprofits from all over the world!

The Bike House already offers free bicycle repairs and education at community events, coffee shops, and farmers' markets all over DC. Thanks to an awesome group of volunteer mechanics and organizers spooning out healthy doses of hands-on DIY spirit, we teach people to fix their own flats, grease their own chains, and keep themselves on the road.

We've come a long way, and we're poised to continue growing so that we can reach more DC cyclists. Fortunately, other bike coops and organizations are eager to share their successes, models, lessons, and challenges. And we're ready to absorb and adapt ideas about how to sustain and improve our current operations while creatively initiating and maintaining new programs to serve the DC area. 

Here's how we propose to start. For this project, the Bike House will draft a zine that will tell the Bike House’s story. Then, we’ll send two volunteer mechanics--Nelle and Mary Lauran--to share our experiences with folks from bicycle cooperatives and nonprofits at the 8th Bike!Bike! international conference in Austin, Texas. 

Bike!Bike! is a great opportunity to bring back fresh inspiration and ideas to spark Bike House growth. At the conference, leaders in bicycle coops and nonprofits from all over the world come together to share ideas. 

Here are a few of the workshops that Nelle and Mary Lauran will attend and bring back copious notes on:

• How to Teach Hands-Off. This is something we already emphasize. How have other shops and coops been able to incorporate this principle in bicycle education?
  
• Women and Trans Hours. The Bike House offered one class for women-identifyed cyclists, and it was a smashing success. How might attention to gender dynamics facilitate our growth in the future?
  
• Maintenance Classes as a Tool for Outreach. As we reach bicycling communities in diverse parts of DC, our clinics and classes double as community outreach rools. How have other coops organized their maintenance classes so as to keep an eye towards community outreach?
  

We'll add what we learned at Bike!Bike into our zine, and we’ll make it available as a resource for anyone who wants to learn about the Bike House and growing local bicycle cooperatives. Overall, seeing innovative projects and models we hadn't considered will allow us to rethink what is possible in DC, and we'll copiously document our inspiration for the benefit of others. It's all about skill-sharing and creating a more inspired, bike-friendly, self-sustaining world.  

Your funds will help pay for two plane tickets to Austin, the Bike!Bike! registration fee, and the printing and distribution costs for making the Bike House zine. 

From the bottoms of our bottom brackets, thank you!