Community Bikes has been providing bicycles to Charlottesville kids and adults in need since 2001, but with the widespread rush to ride over the past calendar year, the nonprofit has shifted into another gear.
According to Director of Community Development Lauren Riegl, Community Bikes doubled revenues from 2019 to 2020. The organization was fully registered as a 501(c)(3) as of February this year, and now it’s moving into a new central location in Preston Plaza.
“It’s funny because it is this old organization, but in a lot of ways, we are starting fresh,” Riegl says.
What hasn’t changed over the years? Community Bikes makes cycles with wheels 24 inches and under available to any kid who wants one. It gives bigger bikes to adults, and partners with other nonprofits that have clients in need of transportation. The rest of Community Bikes’ inventory, collected via tax-exempt bicycle donations, is tuned up and sold to support the organization.
In 2020, Community Bikes gave 600 cycles away to children. It gave about 250 more to adults in need and sold roughly 450 refurbished bikes.
“For these families, kids’ bikes are expensive,” Riegl says. “They start with a balance bike and move up from there. They grow out of them. We help with waste, as well.”
Outside of retail sales, Community Bikes runs on monetary donations. Until recently, the nonprofit was 100 percent volunteer-operated, but it’s now hired two full-time and two part-time employees.
The staff growth was a good thing, according to Riegl, because C’ville’s cyclers rushed to bike shops last spring. People who didn’t want to use what little public transportation was available needed a ride. Other quarantine-bound locals wanted to exercise without crowding into gyms. Come summer, most bike shops were out of stock.
“By the end of every day, we were cleared out,” Riegl says. “It was sad. We want to be able to get as many people on bikes as possible.”
The trend was hardly limited to Charlottesville. According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association, cycle sales nationwide jumped by more than 40 percent in 2020. And the increase was none too soon—the previous year, 2019, saw bike unit sales decrease by more than 20 percent.
The past year was not without its difficulties for Community Bikes, though. The group learned in December it was losing its rent-free home at 405 Avon St. to a housing development and would have to be out of the space by June of this year. Reigl said the team fortunately negotiated a new space and signed a letter of intent to move into 917 #D Preston Ave. in February.
Riegl says she hopes the community’s increased interest in biking will continue, and NBDA’s forecasts indicate it might. Based on changing lifestyles, heightened interest in bicycling for recreation, and a continued need to take bikes to work, domestic cycle sales should continue to grow, with U.S. revenues reaching $8 billion by 2025.
For its part, Community Bikes will continue to do what it can to make bicycling appealing—putting on free repair classes, holding bike-friendly events like group rides and bike-in movie nights, advocating to make the region more cycle-friendly, launching a trailer program to bring repairs to disadvantaged areas, and partnering with the Virginia Institute of Autism.
“We don’t want the cost of bike repairs to be prohibitive, and a lot of people have a hard time getting back to the shop,” Reigl says. “We want to expand access…get bikes not just to the people who would immediately come to mind.”