The future of GoBike as a campaign is sadly currently hanging in the balance.
As a group of prior caretakers of the campaign, we hope you don’t mind us contacting you to see whether you might be able to give some time to GoBike.
We have no one actively running GoBike. The volunteers who have helped run this campaign over the last many, many years have gradually stepped back to the point where we now have no caretaker group running the campaign. We are currently in the position where we don’t have anyone to lead / chair, or to keep communications going to and from and within the campaign. Similarly, we don’t have anyone to carry out the treasurer’s role.
Both of these roles are essential to a campaign with paid membership, and one with a good communications channel with the council and other related organisations. We have a great team keeping our consultations section ticking over, and we still have our monthly rides on the go. However, we also need help with our social media, with campaign ideas and their organisation, and with other admin tasks.
Do you think you can help?
Up until now GoBike has run with a committee of a number of people spreading the load of the campaign tasks between them. They met around 6 times a year, every two months, and in between kept in touch via a channel on slack. This set up doesn’t have to continue – anyone able to offer their help can meet to decide how they wish to continue the running of the campaign. As past committee members we will support new caretakers in a handover period.
If you do think that you can give some time please get in touch with us by email at this link or via campaigns @ gobike.org
We will gather together any offers of help and then plan to hold an Extra General Meeting towards the end of March (keep your eyes peeled for dates), where we as members will come together to decide the future of the campaign.
Active travel funding is increasing so campaigns like GoBike are needed more than ever to ensure the money is spent wisely. Over the years we have worked successfully at moving active travel up the agenda in new council projects. We still need to ensure that pressure is there to keep that being the case, and to ensure that the designs of new projects meet current standards and that they ensure the safety of people cycling.
Giving what time you can to GoBike will help to keep people cycling that little bit safer, it might help open up cycling to those who don’t yet dare, you’ll make good like-minded friends and believe it or not, it can even be a lot of fun!
If you do think you would like to get more involved or want to know more about how you might be able to help do drop us an email at this link or via campaigns @ gobike.org