The majority of work we did in our first year was fixing up bikes that were not being ridden. In some cases, we went to community centers and neighborhoods and did free bike tune-ups, but mostly we collected donated bikes, fixed them up and gave them to people that would otherwise not be able to afford a bike.

This year, we didn't continue to give bikes away to anyone-anytime-no-questions-asked as we did last summer. It just wasn't providing much end-to-end value to the community or to our volunteers. However, as we look at the projects that we want to continue, bike donations are at the heart of most of them: earn-a-bike, "Create a Commuter," subsized bike sales to working poor, etc.

If you have a bicycle that you are no longer riding, please consider donating it to us.
Here's what we plan to do with bikes.

• Most kid bikes: Will likely be given away to low-income children, either directly through events such as the KHQ Pedal Pals bike drive, or through women's shelters and other organizations that have direct contact with kids. We often have a surplus of kids bikes. Please contact us before you donate a kids bike.
• Medium-to-high quality adult bikes: Nice bikes will be sold on Craigslist or Ebay to help fund other programs. Others will be used for earn-a-bike or "Create a Commuter" programs. Others will be matched with working-poor through other organizations.

Important! Please review our Bike Donation FAQ before you bring a bike to us. We have very limited space and we can't afford to take every bike, so we're a bit more particular than we have been in the past. We do not take all bikes.

Bikes can be dropped off at our garage on the South Hill (near the Rocket Market on Hatch) on Monday and Wednesday nights from 6-8 pm. Contact us at pedals2people@gmail.com for more information and directions to our garage. Or you can call us at 509-842-6597.

If you are intersted in helping out, there are many things you can do. Here's a list. If you are insterested in anything listed here or feel like you might have a service or stuff that may be interesting to us or if you have a good fund-raising idea, please send us an email.

Volunteer

• Bike Hauler: got a truck or a van? We have a list of bikes we need to pick up. We give you the list, you go and pick up the bikes and drop them at our storage area. We also do monthly runs to our big storage space with a stack of VBP bikes.
• Wrencher: we can always use help from folks who are good with tools and wrenching on bikes specifcially. If you have your own tools and a bike stand that is great; if you don't that's ok too.
• Pumper, cleaner, luber, traffic engineer: If you don't feel so comfortable wrenching on bikes, then how about pumping up tires? Or cleaning chains? Or generally helping the flow of traffic at our bike tune-ups?
• The back office folks: accountant, web designer/HTML'er, grant writer, email sender, filer -- You don't have to be a grease-monkey to help us out. We need help building the organization.
• We like mad skilz. If you have skills you think we need, let us know. For example, we need a really enthusiastic welder to hang out with us and help us build some tall bikes.

• Bikes and bike stuff: if you have gently used or not-so-gently-used-but-still-lots-of-life-left bikes or bike parts, we'll put them to good use. Check out our bike donation program. Ideally, you can drop them off, but if you can't then we'll find a way to get them.
• Money donations/whole sale parts and supplies. Contact Liza at pedals2people@gmail.com