[wulfenstien]

My 15 y/o son was recently diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic. We've been in contact with the local Juvenile Diabetic Research Foundation about this and that. While exploring their website I saw they had a bike ride for the cure. I'm not much of a bicycle rider, nor is anyone else in my family. We all enjoy riding motorcycles.

So I've come up with the idea for a motorcycle charity ride here in Dallas. To my knowledge, and searching, there isn't one in this area. I've found a few in other states, but not sure they are still active.

I'm still formulating ideas and such and wonder if any of you have some thoughts or ideas of your own. Any experiences? Anything that will help with our venture. Planning on doing this in May of next year. I don't want to "throw" this together.

Thanks in advance.

James

 

[7xclm]

I am diabetic also. The local foundation should help. Have a small registration fee of say $10.00. Plan a ride with several stops to throw syringes at a dart board. Winner would be the rider with the most points. Rider with the least points could be a winner also. Sell raffle tickets for donated motorcycle gear, have the drawing after the ride.

 

[MikeAstringer]

I helped organize a bike run for an animal rescue last year. It was the 3rd annual so I wasn't there for the first 2. Our biggest challenge was to anticipate how many people would show. This was important to make sure we had enough volunteers and for food. We had about 400 bikes show. If I recall charged $20 for a rider and $15 for passenger. We ran out of food (lots of pissed off bikers!), didn't have enough parking at the final spot and I didn't have enough volunteers to manage it all. My role was to recruit and manage the volunteers for the day. Easily the most exhausting day of my life!

We also had vendors attend. I think we charged them $100 or $150 for the space (I don't remember). They were thrilled with their return.

Getting people to show, in my opinion, was the easy part. We advertised the hell out of it on Facebook (including all of the local bike groups), advertised it in the local bike rag and personally invited non 1% bike clubs and organizations to join us.

We started planning the event about this time of year for a June kickoff. You are right to take a year to plan your first. We did our run as a poker run so we had to plan the route, line up the stops, print t-shirts, get donations for the 50/50 and silent auction, etc, etc. I suggest that you put together a committee and assign jobs. We would never have pulled it off otherwise. Get your volunteers together the weekend before and be sure they all fully understand their jobs for the day.

If you have specific questions about pulling off the event feel free to send me an email [email protected]. I run a business and my wife and i now run our own dog rescue so my time is very limited but I'll respond as quickly as I can.