In this article, James Beecher, Project Manager at Creative Sustainability, shares how Profit for Good helped Access Bike recover from the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and find the road to sustainability.
Access Bike is a community bike workshop and youth space in an old Mill building in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Our mission is to reduce the financial barriers to owning and maintaining a bike. We’re part of a Community Interest Company called Creative Sustainability, which focuses on Inclusion, Empowerment, and Sustainability. We accept donations of old bikes and use them to engage and train disabled and otherwise marginalised people, predominantly those aged 13-25. Once bikes have been refurbished, they are offered to young people or sold to help fund the project.
Our aim with the Profit for Good scheme is to maximise the community bike workshop’s benefit by developing and extending our provision while organising processes to maximise earned income. The scheme has enabled us to reinvigorate the project after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying restrictions. We’ve increased our opening hours through additional staff and casual employment time and invested in renovating our space – with a new coat of industrial floor paint and a wrap-around wall mural designed and painted in collaboration with our young participants. We’ve also taken on a new shopfront space in the nearby town centre, which will provide us with greater visibility and footfall and the opportunity to expand our stock of accessories and sales of these. In 2023, we more than doubled the number of bikes we sold to 115, giving a further 27 bikes away to young people and supporting another 200 people with bike mechanics.
Some of the young people we supported benefited from improvements to our mentoring offer – 1:1 ratio staffing for young and/or disabled people who need support to participate in the workshop for any reason. We produced a new leaflet and an online referral form, supporting more people and increasing our mentoring income. We are also collecting interview and observational data through the trial provision of bespoke ‘cycle buddy’ support that can help people understand what sort of bike they might need, how to check their bike for maintenance issues and develop riding confidence and road sense. Feedback has been very positive. Finally, we have started a process that will enable us to launch a membership scheme to generate further income—redesigning our logo and website and building a new email newsletter that now has over 200 subscribers.
We increased our earned income by £11,162 in total. This is excellent news, but it has been essential in a year when we received a £ 20,813 reduction in funding from grants, foundations, and the Lottery. The Profit for Good programme has enabled us to step things up at Access Bike! We’ve also received guidance to explore our stakeholder network and partner relationships, our value proposition – and develop skills relevant to managing the project. I’ve found participating in the programme beneficial regarding conversations with others.
James Beecher
Project Mananger at Creative Sustainability
