GPC Donations Procedure
and Guidelines

Introduction

Every year, the Grizzly Peak Cyclists makes donations out of proceeds raised from our Century to bicycle-related non-profit organizations and causes. This is consistent with the club's formal objectives as stated in the GPC Bylaws (Article III): “to provide cyclists with a variety of challenging bicycle-riding experiences and to promote safe bicycle riding and touring”. A detailed list of our donations over the past several years appears on the main donations page.

Procedure

The process usually occurs in the late summer and fall (see timeline, below). It consists of these steps:

1. A proposal for the year's donation allocations is prepared by the Donation Committee. That committee consists simply of all GPC members who attend the donation meeting. The donation meeting is announced in advance in the club newsletter, the Wheel Truth. Attendance is limited to GPC members.
2. Detailed presentations on behalf of current or potential donation recipients are not made at the Donation Committee meeting. Instead, any such presentations should be made as a program presentation at a regular monthly club meeting.
3. At the next regular club meeting after the Donation Committee meeting, the donation proposal from the committee is voted up or down as a package. However no fine tuning is done, unless members at the club meeting explicitly agree to do so by majority vote. (This happened once because the proposal did not comply with traditional donation guidelines.) If the proposal is rejected, then it's back to step 1: a new Donation Committee meeting is held to prepare a new proposal.
4. After the proposal is accepted at a regular club meeting, it is published in the Wheel Truth. It must be confirmed by a second vote at a second club meeting before becoming final. (The bylaws, Article V Section 4(b)(vi), require publication in the newsletter prior to any vote on such a matter.)

Guidelines

The donations proposal must meet these guidelines:

1. Donations must be related to bicycling in some way.
2. Donations must be to organizations, not to individuals.
3. In particular, no donations to, or on behalf of, individuals doing rides, regardless of the cause being ridden for.
4. Donations must have some local Bay Area benefit. Donations to statewide and nationwide organizations that meet the other criteria are ok, provided there is a trickle-down local effect. Donations to local bike advocacy in another region or state are not ok.

Timeline

2011 Cycle. Our 2011 donation cycle is now complete. The Donation Committee met in August; the preliminary up-or-down vote passed at the September club meeting; the final package received approval at the October club meeting; and the checks were mailed on 11 November.

2012 Cycle. Requests from potential new recipients are best made in Fall-Winter 2010-2011. The final deadline for new requests of any sort is 10 August 2012. The Donation Committee will meet shortly after that date to assemble the 2012 proposal. The proposal will be presented for preliminary up-or-down vote at the September club meeting. If approved at the September meeting, the confirmatory vote will take place at the October meeting.

Remarks

Recently there has been increased interest in our donation program. Here are some observations from the Donation Committee Chair based on watching our Donation Committee make its decisions over the past few years.
• Causes are more likely to be funded if the request originates from GPC members than from outside.
• Causes are more likely to be funded if they benefit a large number of bicyclists, or the bicycling public as a whole.
• Causes which are very local (for example, focused within a particular municipality or on a particular amenity) are much more likely to be funded if they are within our main membership home area or one of our main riding areas.
• Anyone who wishes to give a presentation at a regular monthly club meeting (step 2, above) should contact the Program Director several months in advance.

Background

A verbal outline of these procedure and guidelines was presented at the club meeting of 16 July 2003, and consensus was to proceed with a written version. A written draft was circulated for comment at the meeting of 20 August 2003, and a revised draft was published in the Wheel Truth, September 2003, page 1. The procedure and guidelines were formally approved at the club meeting of 17 September 2003.

In 2009, revisions were made as follows. Step 2 of the procedure now shown above was discussed at the club meeting of 11 March 2009 and was formally approved at the club meeting of 8 April 2009 along with some corresponding changes elsewhere in the text. Former guideline (e) was superseded by the new step 2 and was removed at the same time.

This page is maintained by Mark Abrahams, Donation Committee Chair, <DonationsChair at Grizz dot org>.