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Location: 3961 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA MAP

Volunteer days are back, in a new format! They're the second and fourth Saturdays, on a smaller scale. See our Eventbrite site at bikex.eventbrite.com for details and to RSVP. Grab your spot and join in on the wrenching for good! See the event calendar for more events and volunteer days.

Donate bicycles and parts by appointment. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and details of what you have. We have specific drop-off times on Wednesday and Friday and other times by special arrangement. We'll let you know if we have a need for your items and get you drop-off details.

The Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange is a Section 501c(3) non-profit organization.

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Is it really 2023 already?

We hope everyone is staying safe and dry in our very wet start to 2023. 

The year 2022 was a complete blur, as we were cranking to the very end. I'm happy to report to our community of supporters, donors, volunteers and recipients, it surely was worth it.

 

2022 by the Numbers

It was a year of amazing productivity, community and generosity. We're grateful for so many record-breaking accomplishments: 

  • 1035 bikes donated to those in need, our most ever and 33% more than 2021!
  • 457 locks, 233 rechargeable lights, and 132 helmets donated
  • 779 volunteers put in over 11,000 hours
  • Over 250 bikes repaired at 16 offsite repair events
  • We increased our individual donor base by 160%
  • Held two successful parking lot sales
  • Raised $8K in our Silent Auction Fundraiser (also 33% more than in 2021)

 

So Many Bikes, So Many New Riders!

Over 1,000 bikes donated! We set this ambitious goal for 2022, and for most of the year, it looked like we might fall short. But thanks to volunteers and staff working most of the days of December, we made it! And we didn’t just stop at 1,000 but the bike donations continued until the end of the year, with a final, special bike donation, #1035.

And yet we did all that by selling fewer refurbished bikes than the previous year. More of our staff and volunteer time was spent growing our community impact, something we can all be proud of. In 2022, for every bike we sold, we donated over two! And we kept these bikes and riders safe with hundreds of lock, light and helmet donations. 

While historically we’ve helped Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties through our bike donations, in 2022 we expanded our impact by taking our wrenches on the road, in the form of neighborhood bike repair events. These events helped us get more than 250 people with bikes in disrepair riding again, many of whom could not afford bike repairs at retail pricing. 

 

It Took a BikeX Village!

So many of you made all these bike, lock, light and helmet donations and bike repairs possible through countless hours of volunteering. An impressive 779 of you made it to our shop, worked on bikes at home, or attended our offsite events, putting in an amazing 11,128 hours! That’s a new record for BikeX, and 27% more than in 2021. 

Equally impressive is that those hours were spread throughout every day of the week. In 2019, almost all of our volunteer hours came from our second and fourth Saturday events. Now, just around 25% of these hours come from these events. We’ve got a regular group of ultra-productive Wednesday morning volunteers, an energetic crew of youth coming in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after school and during the summer, and volunteer youth groups coming in on weekend days throughout the year, plus our addition to our loyal crew of homework bike volunteers. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

We've not only added diversity in the days of the week volunteers come to help, but also more diversity in age and background. We've got youth as young as middle schoolers regularly putting in important hours, and a melting pot of students, including youth from Peru, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.  

 

We’re Earning Our Stripes

You might not see us wearing rainbow-striped jerseys around the shop, but thanks to so many, you made us feel like champs, with some major wins outside the numbers. The Silicon Valley Triathlon Club picked us as one of two recipients for the generous proceeds of its Silicon Valley Kid’s Triathlon. Late in 2022, two of our board members, Dave Fork and Jack Miller, received the Western Wheelers Lefkowitz award. Our long-term intern, Tuong Pham, graduated from San Jose State. Lastly, SVBC recognized all of our good work with an amazing Professional of the Year award, which I was honored to receive at the Coalition’s annual Summit. 

We also are thankful for fruitful and growing partnerships with the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, the City of Palo Alto, Palo Alto Unified School District, Gunn high school, four different police departments in Stanford, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Redwood City, Turning Wheels for Kids, Live in Peace, Community Cycles, City of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Palo Alto Transportation Management Association, many local bikes shops and more. 

Like any year, we also had a few challenges. With such ambitious goals for the year, we worked harder than ever to keep an incoming stream of bike donations coming. Some of us weathered COVID-19, and at least one of us suffered a few concussions. Ouch. And lastly, we fell quite a bit short of our $20k goal in our first-ever Board Match fundraiser (but we learned a lot!). We can’t win them all.

 

Looking Ahead

We have big plans in 2023 to expand our community impact and presence. In addition to our bikes donated and offsite repairs, in 2023, we’re planning to offer our low-income neighbors free or low-cost bike repairs at our shop. We’re also looking to expand our activities to reach more of the two counties we serve. With any luck, this is the year we’ll finally give our outdated website a revamp! And I’ll be working with the board to provide more transparency to our goals, both impact and financial, to our active volunteer base. 

It’s been an honor to serve the BikeX and Bay Area community these last three years. I am excited for 2023. Thank you for your continued support.

Happy wrenching and riding!

-Andrew
Executive Director, BikeX.org