Perhaps our biggest achievement in 2019 was ending the year under contract with a part-time Executive Director, John Tallmadge, who will be carrying our momentum into 2020 as our first paid staff person. We have significant growth in store for 2020 and to motivate us this year, we wanted to reflect on last year’s successes!

Advocacy

We envisioned a Low Stress Network of Light Individual Transportation (LIT) lanes in Durham, designing comprehensive maps that will be shared with various community groups for input before presenting to the city.
The Ride of Silence, which honors cyclists who have been killed or injured while biking, and our Jack-O-Lantern tactical urbanism project, in which we placed pumpkins along the unprotected bike lane on Broad Street, drew attention to the need for bike safety infrastructure and garnered coverage from ABC11, CBS17, the Herald Sun, News & Observer, IndyWeek, and Streetsblog.

Events and Rides

We hosted Bike-a-Bull City, our annual fall event, which included three community bike rides, a kids’ bike rodeo, a maintenance clinic, and a raffle at the family-friendly Scrap Exchange.
Board member Jen McDuffie led 22 Bike/Walk to School events in addition to several Bike Safety classes in Durham Public Schools, and she helped city staff write a state grant to transfer ownership of these programs to the Durham Dept. of Transportation going forward (Bike Durham will still contribute volunteers).
We hosted three summer community rides to Audio Under the Stars, an outdoor storytelling event at the Center for Documentary Studies.
We tabled at the Eno River Festival, Durham Co-op Market, and the Farmers’ Market, among other events, and we offered bike valet along with BPAC at the Center Fest Arts Festival.
We hosted monthly community meetings, with featured guests like Alta Planning & Design, Leah Shahum, the Founder and Director of Vision Zero, and Sean Egan, the City’s new Director of Transportation.
We demonstrated our holiday spirit and sweet rides, including some cool e-bikes, in the Durham Holiday Parade.

Membership and Engagement

We’ve grown our membership to 223 current, renewing member individuals or households.
We raffled off a brand-new bike (valued at $2,000) as part of our summer membership drive.
Our monthly newsletter subscribers have increased 41% since February; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followers are up an average of 26%.

Community Connections and Capacity Building

We started a business membership program and now have support from business partners such as Visual Rituals and soon the Triangle Rock Club of Durham.
We now conduct board and committee meetings at ReCity, a co-working space that we share with several other social justice non-profits.
Working with BPAC, bike shops, and many other organizations, we promoted 20 Bike Month events in May including seven Bike-to-Work Day pit stops.
Through financial sponsorship and volunteering, we contributed to the Untokening Conference, a multiracial collective and gathering that centers the lived experiences of marginalized communities to address mobility justice and equity.
To learn more about systemic racism and how we can continue pushing for equity in our work and diversity in our organization, the board attended a ½ day workshop by the Racial Equity Institute
We partnered on a Durham 150 grant with BPAC that contributed to Bike Month and other events and provided helmets to those in need. We also secured a donation from Lyft and raised funds through Facebook fundraisers.