Case Study
Boise Bicycle Project : Grantee Program 2022
Goal:
Boise Bicycle Project promotes the personal, social, and environmental benefits of bicycling. Through inclusive access to refurbished bicycles, repair, and empowering educational experiences, they strive to build a stronger bicycling community.
Challenges:
Keeping staff and volunteers
Prepping to grow
Investing in staff
Understanding mission
Solution:
Various assessments
Deep expertise in strategic planning, design thinking, facilitation, and coaching
Results:
Unrestricted $15,000 grant for year-one efforts
Almost $15,000 in professional expertise hours provided by 19 different capacity builders
Lowest turnover of staff in 2021 in their history
2 of the best financial years on record, largely due to Idaho Partner for Good support
Growing the Organization and Retaining People
Boise Bicycle Project started in 2007 in the founder's apartment, fixing up bikes for kids in need. In 2011, they started fundraising for their new and current location, while also raising funds for their projects locally and in select villages in Africa.
The organization is committed to growing fast and delivering on their promises of access to a bicycle for every individual, quick, reliable, and affordable bicycle repair, and families in every neighborhood being connected to safe places to ride.
Boise Bicycle Project has always made a big impact on the Boise nonprofit scene with limited resources. Executive Director Jimmy Hallyburton loves the passion from his team that allows them to do that.
But as Jimmy says, "it puts a lot of stress on our staff members to be doing multiple different jobs and really having a lot on their plate."
As COVID-19 hit and many of Boise Bicycle Project's initiatives had to be pared back or temporarily closed down, the gaps between what they wanted to do and their ability to get these things done were becoming increasingly apparent.
They knew they needed support to move forward and grow with a stable sustainable foundation to the organization.
This is where Idaho Partners for Good came in.
Building Stronger Operational Infrastructure
The first thing Idaho Partners for Good did after providing the $15,000 unrestricted year-one grant was to have Boise Bicycle Project complete an Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA). Board members, leadership, front-line staff, and volunteers completed the assessment, which evaluated 8 different areas within Boise Bicycle Project, from governance and leadership to communications, from culture and norms to financial management and strategic plans.
The OCA is an important tool to help an organization ask tough questions about its culture, people, and infrastructure. It uncovered both strengths and areas for improvement. It's a key to help design the future with Idaho Partner for Good's grantees and for good reason.
Jimmy Hallyburton says of that early part of the process with Idaho Partner for Good: "We began to see some of the gaps and realized that maybe we didn't have as much alignment and awareness on our mission as we thought we did."
Together with the $15,000 unrestricted grant, Idaho Partner for Good provided over 310 pro bono professional consulting hours invested by 19 different volunteers, each with deep expertise in an area Boise Bicycle Project needed. Those volunteer hours represented another $15,000 of investment.
“We had specialists who came in to formulate better questions, evaluate data, and show us how certain tools work,”
Idaho Partners for Good provided best-in-class resources for strategic planning and design thinking, together with facilitators who helped with accountability, coaching, and general cheerleading.
“Our volunteer facilitators are heavily committed to supporting nonprofits in this structural way and so they come in with both the head and the heart. We provide experience with empathy and a great deal of cheerleading.”
Boise Bicycle Project was aware before becoming Idaho Partner for Good's pilot grantee that there were likely issues with their staffing and culture. The results of the OCA confirmed their suspicions. They worked closely with Idaho Partner for Good to develop their new strategic plan, while Idaho Partner for Good worked on identifying the right tools and resources, designing evaluation tools, deploying capacity builders at just the right time to meet a need, as well as developing a workplace culture survey. The combination of these resources helped them see where work was needed to propel the organization forward.
Boise Bicycle Project had always developed a conservative budget; keen to ensure that every dollar donated was hard at work to achieve their mission. But this process helped them see that without strong organizational foundations, those donor dollars were not being maximized. Looking at the research provided by Idaho Partner for Good allowed them to change up how they approached their budget, to ensure they invested in the organization's ability to strengthen and grow, so it could do more good.
Jimmy says that knowing they should change the focus of their budget allowed them to create a surplus "that allowed us to invest a little bit more in the following year in training for employees and benefits for our employees and keep people around longer."
Best Financial Year and Lowest Turnover of Staff
Boise Bicycle Project has had an incredible couple of years, despite being in a pandemic that has hit the nonprofit sector particularly hard.
The results from the variety of assessments, tools, coaching, and support Idaho Partners for Good provided went a long way to fix systemic problems Boise Bicycle Project knew were lurking but hadn't had the capacity to deal with head-on. As a result, Boise Bicycle Project has its most cohesive and mission-driven team to date and its lowest turnover of staff in its 14 years as an organization.
The strategic and budgetary changes Boise Bicycle Project made since partnering with IP4G have resulted in its two best financial years on record. Some of that success is related to COVID recovery grants and funds, but the largest portion is related to the shift ni strategy inspired by the feedback from the OCA assessment.
Boise Bicycle Project also set new organizational records for the number of bicycles distributed to people in need, and the number of people served with their mobile bicycle repair services. Boise Bicycle Project is looking to break that record again ni 2021, thanks to the foundational changes they made to address staffing, funding, and resources.
“I think the pandemic reframed the conversation around nonprofits, and let donors see what the landscape might look like if we disappeared. Idaho Partners for Good gave us a lot of flexibility with how we used the funding to best support our organization. Ithink other donors are now looking to do the same and say we just want you to keep on going.”
Looking to the future, Boise Bicycle Project is now ready to scale. And that's in big part due to the analysis and deep learning they committed to as part of the journey with Idaho Partners for Good, which drew out the foundational aspects they needed to work on to build a solid base from which to grow.