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Serious question: has any other bike company–bike brand, accessory, components, we’ll just open it up wide–donated this much to trail building? I’ve heard of plenty of donations and support for advocacy groups but… half a million?! Sound off if you know of any that can top this recent donation from Santa Cruz: http://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-news/santa-cruz-bicycles-just-donated-500000-to-build-trails-in-the-san-vicente-redwoods/
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Just learned they (SC) are also involved in a raffle to raise more money for trails!
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I don’t think anyone has given this much all at one pop, but I’m guessing some of the big guys come close if you add up each company’s individual trail project donations… over decades. 🙂
I’m guessing other companies have also given significantly to IMBA’s trailbuilding fund over the years. Is there a reason this money didn’t go there? Probably not since this particular project hits really close to home for SC, but perhaps that would be an interesting discussion. 🙂
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I think dollars going to “advocacy” and dollars going to “trail building” are actually two different things. Lots of companies give money to advocacy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their $$ go towards building new trails. Also, lots of the big companies donate money to advocacy organizations that have nothing to do with mountain biking. Which is good and all, but very different from what Santa Cruz did.
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IMBA actually has a separate “Trail Building Fund” where (presumably) the money goes straight into trail building projects rather than their general fund. Here’s how they describe it:
You give, then we double or even triple your donation by matching it with funds from industry partners and foundation grants. The money then goes to support the design, construction, protection and maintenance of trail systems and bike parks across the U.S. Thanks to that support—your support—local mountain bike groups create new places for all of us. Build it, ride it!
So clearly a good bit of $$ from companies is going into this to match trail fund donations from individuals.
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Oh, and they mention the fund paid out $360K in a single year (2014) to 30 different projects.
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Ah nice, that is pretty rad–definitely news to me! Good to know about this.
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What happened to the Bell Built Grant this year?
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Other big companies that have made big contributions have sometimes done it with time rather than $. For example, Microsoft here in WA has volunteer days where they have had 50 -60 employees spend the day building trail. That is not a small amount of value. REI does this as well.
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check this out! https://slate.adobe.com/cp/t4b8x/
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We received a $3000 grant from Specialized to build a local trail with a total build budget of $35,000. This was a key grant as it was the first one that we received and opened the door to a lot of other grant money from various sources. My rule is that the first grant is always the hardest to get, but after that others fall into place because your project has legitimacy. It isn’t necessary the amount given in one shot, but the total amount of giving for little projects that makes the most impact to our daily riding.
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