…we Interrupt this broadcast

Hey there, GIVE UP. As you may have noticed, we canceled all of our rides between September 27th through October 3. I wanted to take a moment to give you some insight into why that is and what is coming next.

The short answer: We are now insured.

All members of GIVE UP are now covered under insurance for all club rides going forward. GIVE UP joined the League of American Bicyclists and took advantage of their insurance program to get there. You can find all sorts of information about this, what it covers, and more on their Insurance Program page.

The long answer: Getting insurance required a number of changes.

GIVE UP was not created as a formal organization. We’ve never really had “members” or any sort of membership structure. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate all of your participation over the years, but when people ask me “how many members does GIVE UP have?” I’m not sure if the answer is “none” or “a lot,” and I definitely can’t give anything close to an exact number.

It turns out that getting bike rides insured is really hard if you can’t define how many members you have. It also turns out that insuring the riders themselves is basically impossible if you can’t prove that they are actually members of the organization.

So here’s the thing: GIVE UP has a membership structure now. You can become an official, card-carrying member of GIVE UP. Hell, you can sign up right now at https://members.giveup.bike and be a bona fide member of a real bike club as soon as I approve the application.

Putting the toothpaste back into the tube

So here’s the thing: having a membership structure is great and having insurance is wonderful. I really don’t want to worry if people have health insurance every time somebody bites it on a bike ride, and am generally stoked about taking steps to ensure that’s not a thing in the future. Despite all of these benefits, there is still a very awkward transition that we need to go through to make sure that individuals are covered when they ride with GIVE UP, and that involves ensuring that people who ride with us are members.

For the time being, start points and routes for group rides will only be visible to members in the member portal. I don’t want to be turning people away at rides over administrative bullshit, but I also don’t want any gaps in who is covered while we work through this awkward transition we are going through. (If you want to make my life easier and make this transition less awkward for everybody, go get signed up today.)

This means that in order to see where we are starting or where we are going, you will need to join as a member, fill out all of the waivers and agreements the insurance company requires, and be approved as a member. I imagine that when we come back next week, we will begin posting updates in all of the usual places, but instead of posting routes directly to Strava, we will direct you to hit the member portal for details.

I’m sorry if it’s a little awkward and messy at first, but I want to start out by erring on the side of caution and then adjust as we figure out what works / what doesn’t.

The plus side

Hopefully you have all learned by now that I am not interested in making money from GIVE UP. In a world where everything seems to be a bullshit cash grab, I genuinely start everything we do from a position of “how do we make sure this is free to participate in.” This transition to a membership structure is no different, and keeping GIVE UP free to participate in was the first thing considered when planning out these changes.

We are offering two membership tiers: Free and Paid, both with annual terms aligned to our insurance renewal schedule. There is no difference between the two, and I am the only person who will ever know if your membership is free or paid. This is solely to give you the option to help offset costs of keeping the club insured, and not at all a requirement of membership. While I very, very much appreciate everybody who chips in, payment is 100% optional.

I will note that being a paid member one year does not require being a paid member in the future (and vice-versa.) You will be able to renew in whatever way is most comfortable for you when it comes up, and I’m not going to pressure you into paying. I feel like the world is probably pressuring you into paying for a million things at any given time and GIVE UP should be fun, not an obligation.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

I know that all of this talk of membership structures and insurance and requisite paperwork is basically the least punk rock thing ever, but hopefully you’ll see where this is coming from and that I’m trying to make this as easy on you all as possible. As I’ve told some of you already: Sometimes being Bike Dad means having to make responsible decisions.

With all of this said though, I honestly and sincerely believe that once we get through getting the message out and onboarding folks into the new membership structure, not much will actually change in how we do things. I’m still going to plan rides the same way I have to date, we’re still going to keep roughly the same schedule, and (barring any major changes,) you will only have to renew waivers annually. Once you are a member, you’re good to participate in everything until renewal time comes along, and renewing should only take you a few minutes. If we all play our cards right, this will be awkward for a little bit, and then everything will be back to normal.

Finally, as long as we have a member portal to organize all of this, we might as well make it useful. Right now you can see and RSVP to events and get reminders by email in there. We should have (very optional) text message notifications and reminders working within the next week and I’ve got some other things I’d like to do with it in coming days to make it more useful for all of you. If you have any thoughts on how the portal works or what might make it more useful, feel free to email me at bingo@giveup.bike or text me 412.616.4937. I would really like to hear from you.

Aside from that, feel free to text me any thoughts/concerns/questions you have about this transition to membership and becoming a legitimately insured club any time. I might not have an answer you like, but I’ll have answers: 412.616.4937

That’s all for now, thank you if you’ve made it this far, and thank you for your patience while we figure all of this out.

xoxo,
bingo

p.s. sorry for all of the words, nobody has ever accused me of brevity