Potential for ACC club funding

[huw williams]

A guy who takes pictures for CW in scotland and rode with me at Bealach Na Ba is part of one of the local clubs up there and he approached his local council for funding for the club. He sold it to them on the basis that the club was a good resource to get local people riding and healthy and would provide a pool of bikes and turbos for potential wannabe racers in the area as well as beginner riders.

The result? The club got £10,000 funding - he went to Trek UK and bought five bikes 3 turbos and a couple of Heart rate monitors at trade price, which are now available to riders in the club for replacement bikes when their own are in for repairs, training tools, and for short-term loan to anyone new to their club runs who is keen but doesn't have a sufficiently good bike.

Number of riders in his club? 30. Just imagine what ACC could do with the membership and catchment area we have.

Anybody with time enough and a marketing background want to follow it up???

[Snoop Doug]

Interesting stuff Huw - what, if anything did the council get/want out of it...?

[huw williams]

Nothing apart from the satisfaction of doing a bit of public good

they have budgets for this sort of thing but they don't have the personel to go around identifying worthy causes and just handing out piles of cash. They need committed souls to approach them and say "If you give us 'x' amount of pounds ACC will provide 'y' amount of equipment which will benefit 'z' number of people in your borough in such and such a way.

So that could translate as give us £20,000 worth of kit and we'll supply training equipment such as turbos/powertaps etc to help local riders getinto racing), plus beginner sessions where J4F riders or potential new members come along to try out decent bikes/kit/riding instruction road awareness etc etc.

I believe there is a (claimed) government incentive to get people onto bikes - this is a way to achieve it and give them access to proper tuition and equipment. Also, playing the youth card always helps - "Get kids off the streets and onto the roads."

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

I went to a seminar a few weeks ago on the same subject and intended to raise it at the committee meeting.

[MJ_1993]

yeah us youths, just stand at street corners with knifes and weapons waiting to mug old people. And cycling stopped me from mugging obviously

[Snoop Doug]

[quote="Mo Jaffer"]yeah us youths, just stand at street corners with knifes and weapons waiting to mug old people. And cycling stopped me from mugging obviously

[Andrew G]

[quote]So that could translate as give us £20,000 worth of kit and we'll supply training equipment such as turbos/powertaps etc to help local riders getinto racing), plus beginner sessions where J4F riders or potential new members come along to try out decent bikes/kit/riding instruction road awareness etc etc.

[quote="Andrew G"][quote] but that sort of thing would require a fair amount of time, effort, and dedication from some people in the club.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

[quote]Is that right PVT?

[Tony]

I was curious why the club needed extra funds. What do we plan to spend it on? A growing pot of cash with (as far as I know) no clear idea what to spend it on is not necessarily a good thing. Same applies to having a large pool of assets....- turbos, bikes or whatever.....

[Andrew G]

Can see your point Tony (oo-er).
Don't get me wrong Huw and PVT, I'm more than happy to help out where I can with most things but the level of commitment needed for this would be beyond what I could (or if fairness would) put in.
Look at the fun we have getting marshals for a handful of events each year.

[huw williams]

[quote="Tony"]I was curious why the club needed extra funds. What do we plan to spend it on? A growing pot of cash with (as far as I know) no clear idea what to spend it on is not necessarily a good thing. Same applies to having a large pool of assets....- turbos, bikes or whatever.....

[kieran]

I know of one person in our local area who is active in the environmental area and this is her self employed job, she puts cases together for funding from various bodies and includes a living wage for herself in the cost estimates. My wife spends alot of time filling in funding applications for the local nature reserve and there is cash out there for well thought out cases.

[Alan M]

This would give you funding, but probably for an event, maybe the cycling equivalent of a fun run or 10k run or criterium race or a series of smaller activities - come up with a good idea that has ACC committee backing and I'll fill in the form - helpful if you could lever some backing from GB but doesn't need to be much.

http://www.croydon.gov.uk/content/docum ... efits1.pdf

Initially think it through under the following headings - these are the sexy areas for council funding

novelty - new for Croydon not backdoor funding of existing stuff
reach across community divides, culture, gender, age etc.
impact in terms of number of people involved or spectating,
legacy and future sustainability,
Health and well being
profile, in terms of enhancing image of Croydon

No point in doing anything now except to agree it is worth doing and an idea to put to ACC committee, nor anything application until funding is known.

keep it small, manageable and realistic

If you get some funding it will need a small group to push it through to completion which I would be happy NOT to lead.

[MJ_1993]

That sounds good, just can PVT not be commissaire, because I thought I had the chain thing sussed, and then after that my chain fall off now and again!