My husband and I came up with a safe way to buy, sell, or donate bicycles and we funded it out of our life savings because that’s what one does to help society. But we’ve grown more than expected; the software we designed had to be stabilized and we need more hardware to match our growth. Both of these cost us more than we have in our personal and nonprofit bank accounts. Then Chris ended up with a double bypass mid-March to add to the worries.

The software we designed flags stolen bikes, the police and insurance companies trust our processes and have retrieved bikes from online sales and pawn shops based on what we do. The linchpin in all of this is our software that makes our event happen, but we also need hardware. We are asking for this money to help our non-profit continue making an impact through preventing the re-sale of stolen bikes by improving our software and being able to buy the hardware to make all of this happen.

We’ve always donated more than half the profit back to the community, the rest stays in the bank to operate the next year’s swaps. We fund legitimate CAN-BIKE safe cycling, we pledge cyclists in charity rides, we help fund the rebuild of the 600-1000 donated bikes, we have over 90 strategic alliances that all play nicely together, we’re the only Bike Index and Project 529 Ambassadors in Calgary (they’re the gold standard to prevent bike theft), and we give out our bike racks to keep events green. We’re more than a bike swap, we’re community.