One Street News

March 2010

Vol. 3, Issue 3

1. European Helmet Campaign Prepares for Action
2. Resources Highlights – Press Release Tips
3. Hot Topics – Funding New Organizations

European Helmet Campaign Prepares for Action

Our partners at the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) are ramping up their campaign effort to stop the dangerization of cycling through helmet promotions. In just over a month, leaders of ECF member organizations will gather in Tczew, Poland for ECF’s annual general meeting. One month later, ECF will host the Velo-city 2010 conference in Copenhagen.

Both of these important gatherings offer an opportunity for the ECF Helmet Working Group to present new findings and campaign materials. Bicycle advocates who attend these events will learn how to spread the word about the damage helmet promotions do to bicycle advocacy efforts. One Street’s executive director, Sue Knaup, will help the group spread this important message at both of these events. All the materials are now posted on the ECF’s Helmets web page to make it easy to print your own. Thanks in advance for helping us spread this important message!

Resources Highlights – Press Release Tips 

All bicycle advocacy campaigns need to get the word out about the changes they propose and press releases are a mainstay for accomplishing this. One Street’s new Writing a Press Release That Gets Published handout is designed to help first-timers as well as veteran media experts ensure their press releases have all the elements that will catch the eye of editors so they will send them right to print.

Hot Topics – Funding New Organizations 

We have all heard the real life fairy tales of nonprofits launched by wealthy individuals or by one enormous grant from a foundation. While these are fun stories to enjoy, they tend to distract leaders of new organizations and cause them to spend their limited time seeking similar, yet unobtainable windfalls.

One of the most common problems we encounter at One Street when answering a call or email from a leader of a struggling new organization is the disappointment and burnout that comes from writing grant after grant after grant without success. Foundation and government grants can be a good addition to a well established organization, especially for specific programs, but they rarely fund new organizations. This problem has two very dangerous sides:

1. the dashed hopes of the new leaders that could lead to their abandoning the organization,
2. the enormous waste of time that grant writing requires which could have been spent on bicycle advocacy and inspiring individuals to help the organization. 

We always guide leaders of new organizations away from grant writing until they have attracted a large group of individual supporters to their organization. These individual heroes of bicycling offer organizations a lifetime of assistance, not only as funders, but as donors of needed items, volunteers and the most important marketing activity of all—word of mouth.

Some bicycle advocacy organizations offer memberships, others simply like to call their supporters “supporters.” Either way works as long as the organization as a comprehensive system in place to:

• Invite supporters to donate money, items and their time
• Record supporters’ information, each of their donations and the dates
• Send supporters a thank you letter within two weeks of their donation
• Request an annual renewal (and even an increase) of their donation

When leaders of new organizations spend their limited time on a system that brings individual supporters to their organization rather than writing grant proposals, they set their organizations up for long term sustainability and success. This list of supportive people will always grow (as long as the organization succeeds with its bicycle advocacy goals) and will be the wellspring for future board members, experts on specific campaigns, volunteers and those wonderful folks who tell everyone they know to support the organization.