Biketivist Forum IV - Growing Local Teams

Apr 1

The fourth Biketivist Forum was a huge success with over 50 participants! Thank you to all our amazing members and supporters for making time in busy mid-week schedules for coming together to advocate for better bike infrastructure and policies.

The concept behind Biketivist forums is to bring local advocates together at the same time,encourage interaction and cross-learning between teams and members, promote and build new leaders, and make teams more effective at advocating for local improvements and bike-friendly policies.

The first hour was spent learning how to build power through numbers, specifically how to grow the local team by becoming better community organizers. The second hour was for the local teams to work on actions in their communities.

We had four presenters for the first hour. Emma Shlaes and Jessica Waite of SVBC talked about how SVBC does outreach and ways that local team members can grow the local team and SVBC at the same time. Then Lauren Renaud and Sarah Hollingsworth from SURJ at Sacred Heart discussed detailed tactics for recruiting and engaging new team members.

Jessica Waite, SVBC Membership & Outreach Coordinator reviewed all the ways folks can help bring new people to the bike movement. Here are the upcoming opportunities she discussed to encourage local teams to grow their teams and SVBC at the same time:

Participate in the Spring Membership Drive – this is a great way to recruit new members to your Local Team AND to SVBC. If each Local Team brought in just 10 new members, that would be 100 new local advocates. Membership Drive participants will receive a membership language toolkit, social media assets, and support from staff and other fundraisers. Click here and click on “become a fundraiser” to join.

Conduct Outreach Pop-Ups – interested in hosting an outreach pop-up in your neighborhood? Great! First you have to go through Bike Ambassador Training. Upcoming dates are April 6, April 14, and April 22. Get your feet wet by participating in Bike Month Pop-Ups!
Nominate Someone for Bike Champion of the Year
Host a Bike to Work Day Energizer Station on May 21!
- Energizer host signup form, Deadline: April 30, 2021
- Host Guide

For the second hour, participants split into breakout rooms based on geography where the team members brainstormed activities to grow their local team. In San Jose, for example, the team decided to reach out to each one of the 150 people subscribed to the San Jose listserve to checkin and see if there are folks who want to help monitor bike projects in their neighborhood. Each team member agreed to take 15 names and is now in the process of sending out emails to each. The goal is to identify 10 more passionate bicyclists in San Jose who want to up their involvement level.

It was another successful event supporting grassroots bicycling advocacy in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. A big SHOUT-OUT to all the wonderful leaders, without whom progress wouldn’t be possible!

Missed Forum IV? Don’t worry – it’s never too late! You can join your local team and the team leader/greeter will bring you up to speed on what they are working on. The presentation and the video from Biktivist IV and previous biktivist forums are linked here.

Up Next

Biketivist Forum V will be Wednesday, April 21 at 5 pm. Click here to register. We have lined up speakers from San José, Fremont, and Daly City to talk through how their cities are working to make their streets safer for everyone by implementing Vision Zero.

Local team leaders