The Outride Fund=More Trails+Youth Cycling Education+Youth Rider Development

Art design credit: Shelby Ling

Outride can help show you the way to bring a full bike program to your middle school or earn matching grant funds to build trails, support youth cycling education, and youth rider development.

The time to apply is now for a spring Outride Riding for Focus Grant or Outride Fund (Spring 2020) Matching Grant. The Riding for Focus grant program and the Outride Fund are two ways Outride helps school and trail champions make the world a lot better for kids today by harnessing the power of cycling to stay focused, active and engaged.

Between the Riding for Focus grant program, and the Outride Fund, we expect to give over $1.4 million in grants during FY 20. We’d love to send some of that financial support to your community.

Bring a Riding for Focus program to your middle school with Outride’s Riding for Focus school-based cycling program designed to provide middle schools with everything they need to get their 6-8 grade students riding. The grant provides bikes, helmets, a class curriculum, starter maintenance equipment, and teacher training. Apply by February 14th for the 2020-21 school program.

Through the Outride Fund, we seek to accelerate the creation of cycling communities around the country through dollar for dollar matching grants. We have made it easy with step by step instructions on how to launch a fundraising campaign and apply for matching funds with our Everydayhero platform. The beauty of this platform is that donors who contribute to your pledge drive receive a tax-deductible donation letter from Outride. Set a reasonable goal for dollars and timeline, and get to work raising that money. Outride will match up to $15,000 ($15k or the amount you raised – whichever is less). 

Highlights for the 2019 Outride Fund:

In the Fall, we issued 19 Matching Grants to organizations from 13 states in the areas of Trails, Youth Cycling Education and Youth Rider Development (primarily NICA teams). In total, we committed $111,000 in matching funds, with the expectation of paying out a total of $230,000 from this Round (if funding goals are met).

Since November 4th (when the grants were awarded), $128,500 dollars have already been earned and distributed to these deserving organizations

And—we are just getting started. The funding will continue this with a cadence of three times a year: Spring 2020 (grant window open now), Summer 2020, and Fall 2020.

Read the Outride Fund Overview for a scorecard on our progress and step by step instructions on how to raise match funds for your project.

Now get inspired by these three Outride Fund Everydayhero Campaigns—focusing on Trails, Youth Education, and Youth Rider Development that will spark your imagination and creativity to get more kids on bikes.

TRAIL FOCUS—The Profile Community Trail, Franconia & Bethlehem, New Hampshire

The Profile School, one of our Riding for Focus Schools in New Hampshire, focused on Trails and started an Everydayherocampaign and raised $15,000. The Outride Fund matched their success with an Outride Fund grant of $15,000 to help their dream of The Profile Community Trail! The five-mile trail from Franconia to Bethlehem will let kids ride a bike, walk, or cross-country ski to school and be the centerpiece of an exciting effort promoting Franconia and surrounding areas as a family-friendly mountain biking destination. Over 14 community partners joined the effort, and the $30,000 of matched funds from Outride helped to push their fundraising goals across the finish line. Yes, it takes a village!

NICA & YOUTH RIDER DEVELOPMENT— Diné Composite NICA Team, Navajo Nation

Yá'át'ééh! –– "It's good" (in Navajo). The first National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) team got started 20 years ago with six student-athletes and one coach. In 2019, the Diné Composite NICA Team did too! With its first AICL season now in the books, Diné Comp looks to 2020 to grow participation and programing across the Navajo Nation.

To date, $8,426.10 of the target goal of $23,000 has been met. Read more here about the motivation, context, challenges, solutions and success of the Diné Composite NICA Team.

In 2018, a local middle school was awarded a fleet of mountain bikes through Outride’s Riding for Focus grant program. The students were also awarded the opportunity to establish the first NICA team in the region, Gallup (GLP) Composite. Now having participated in the Arizona Interscholastic Cycling League (AICL) for its second year, GLP Composite increased in size and has fostered the development of a separate single-school Team at Rehoboth Christian School. It is exactly that which Diné Composite, based on the Reservation in Nazlini, AZ and coached by Vincent Salabye, hopes to foster for additional single-school teams popping up across the Navajo Nation.

“Biking connects us to our communities and neighborhoods by getting us out of our metal boxes (cars) and out from behind our screens where we can interact spontaneously with our surroundings, and our neighbors, and where we can take part in the camaraderie of group rides and competitions.”

- Shared by a Wesley, a supporter and fan.

YOUTH CYCLING EDUCATION—Lookout Valley Bicycling Program, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Lookout Valley Middle High Bicycling Program is in its second year. The school received 18 bikes and equipment through a Riding for Focus grant in 2018. They have been successful teaching students riding skills, safety, and bike maintenance. But there was a need for a few more bikes to enable all physical education students an opportunity to ride. The Everyday Hero Campaign with a target goal of $2, 610 was launched to raise funds to purchase 6 more bikes. The Outride Fund matched their effort with $1,194.97 to get all the students up and riding.

Read more about Lookout Valley in this Outride blog post—Brainwaves and Bikes—and how they partner with the University of Tennessee Chattanooga on the research into Riding for Focus by tracking brainwaves and studying the students’ moods and ability to focus before and after biking.

Learn more about the Outride Fund, Spring deadline to apply is Feb. 28, 2020.

OUTRIDE provides evidence-based cycling interventions to improve social, emotional, and cognitive health. #RidingForFocus