Alliance > Media center > People Powered Blog

Entries tagged: Advocacy Advance Grants

Join us this Thursday, April 7th at 3 p.m. Eastern for a question-and-answer call for prospective applicants for Advocacy Advance Capacity Building Grants. Click here to register for the call.

Capacity Building Grants support the development and professionalization of state and local advocacy organizations to increase rates of biking and walking. Click here for a detailed outline, including guidelines, criteria and other requirements.

Advocacy Advance is a partnership of the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists. This year, a total of $125,000 in awards will go to organizations applying for Model, Rapid Response, and Capacity Building Grants. Visit the new Advocacy Advance website, to learn more about our three types of grants.

If you have any questions, contact Brighid at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you can’t make it, a recording of the call will be posted early next week. If you missed last week’s Q&A call on Model Grants, click here for the recording.

Back in November, we were excited to announce renewed funding for the Advocacy Advance partnership between the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists. Since 2009, this dynamic program has allowed the League and Alliance to produce important research, provide critical technical assistance and award hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct grants to organizations across the country.

In 2011, Advocacy Advance has a renewed focus: tapping into underutilized or new sources of funding to boost bicycle and pedestrian projects in your community. Along with that fresh focus, the program also has a new website. Check it out!

At AdvocacyAdvance.org you can learn more about our mission, mark your calendars for upcoming trainings, get updates on our grants program, and read all the past reports from the Advocacy Advance research team. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for our e-mails and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, so you’ll be in the know when we post new reports or open registration for our Action 2020 workshops.

Interested in Advocacy Advance grants? I’ll be posting more information in a matter of days, so make sure you’re tuned in to AdvocacyAdvance.org.

The Alliance is pleased to announce the hiring of its new Advocacy Advance Program Manager: Brighid O’Keane.

Brighid moves to Washington D.C. from the Bay Area, where she recently opened the Berkeley Student Food Collective and served as its Program Director. An environmental studies graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder, she has worked in Colorado, California, Alaska, and Thailand as a naturalist, community organizer, and alternative educator. She is on the Board of Peers for the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange, which aims to train and connect young activists nationwide. While in California, Brighid led a Global Exchange Bike Aid ride for area youth through the central coast, and a few years ago biked through Donegal, Ireland.

Brighid is excited to bring her experiences working with nonprofits, her background in organizational development, and her passion for active transportation to the Alliance. “I am glad to bring my love for biking, walking, sustainability, and grassroots organizing to the Alliance and am excited to work with all its members to get more people biking and walking in their communities,” Brighid says.

As the Advocacy Advance Program Manager, Brighid will administer the Alliance’s Advocacy Advance Grants program; coordinate and facilitate Advocacy Advance trainings; and work closely with our partners at the League of American Bicyclists as we work to double federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs by 2013.

Stay tuned for more exciting news about Advocacy Advance in coming weeks!

The good news from Advocacy Advance Grant recipients just keeps on coming. First, Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling had a fabulous event to launch their fantastic guide. Then, Bike Walk Connecticut hosted a hugely successful statewide summit. Now, Livable Memphis is making headlines.

This past weekend, Alliance member services director, Jeremy Grandstaff, took a trip down to Tennessee to celebrate “A New Face for an Old Broad.” And it was one rocking party.

The innovative event highlighted the coming transformation of the midtown arts district by adding a little paint to the street pavement. It showcased how vacant storefronts could be revitalized and how bicyclists and pedestrians could become the pulse of a bustling business corridor. And Jeremy had the pleasure of announcing Advocacy Advance funding for the exciting endeavor.

In September, the Alliance awarded a $25,000 matching grant to Livable Memphis, a local advocacy organization that’s making huge strides for biking and walking in the Tennessee town. Earlier this summer, they got their mayor to commit to an impressive 55 miles of new bicycle facilities. Now, they’re focused on making Broad Street a vibrant connection between two of Memphis’ largest parks and a critical extension of the Shelby Farm’s Greenline path.

On Friday, Livable Memphis helped kick off the project with a major flourish. The street was reconfigured with latex paint to include protected bike lanes, and area schools designed new and colorful crosswalks. Cedar trees towering 10 feet high and antique light posts were erected for ambiance. The many vacant storefronts were temporarily inhabited by vendors, and live music entertained the huge crowd of cyclists and pedestrians.

“It just clicked that this had to be done on Broad,” Sarah Newstok, program manager for Livable Memphis, told WMCTV this weekend. “It would be a way to bring in the bike lanes and the facilities that we’re hoping to have along the entire route, and also bring in the neighborhood revitalization piece, which is so important to our work at Livable Memphis.”

Jeremy attended the press conference to announce the $25,000 Advocacy Advance Grant for the Broad Street project and was mighty impressed with the festive two-day affair.

“I started walking down the street toward the festival and all these kids were decorating tricycles and getting ready to ride in the parade,” Jeremy says. “I had some bike pins and I gave one kid a bike pin — and then everybody wanted a bike pin. It was just this feeling of community; this idea of being able to come together to enjoy their streets and their neighborhood.”

“I saw the way that they had embraced access and connected into the arts world,” he adds. “There were artists and different bands and people came and went at their own leisure. They were all having such a great time and to know that we were directly and indirectly involved with that type of a success was really inspiring to me. To have that opportunity to feel like we’re directly funding innovation and to see it happening was really moving.”

Stay tuned for pictures!

Cyclists understand public streets more intimately than most motorists. On our regular routes, we know the precise location of every pothole and potentially wheel-swallowing sewer grate. We learn how traffic flows and explore streets that many automobiles never see.

But, when it comes to road design, many bike commuters and recreational riders are tossed into utterly unknown territory.

Advocates want to see bicycle facilities included in local transportation projects, but the agency jargon and hyper-detailed engineering schematics can be a foreign language.

Virginia advocates have come up with a handy road map that demystifies the bureaucratic maze.

In 2009, the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling — a working group of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association — received one of the very first Advocacy Advance Grants from the Alliance. In the span of a single year, the FABB turned that $9,600 award into a “Guide for Reviewing Public Road Design and Bicycling Accommodations for Virginia Bicycling Advocates.”

The 28-page resource simplifies and streamlines the confusing road design process with easy-to-follow flow charts, handy check lists and explanations that make sense to folks who don’t have a masters degree in urban planning. In a neatly designed format, FABB lays out the anatomy of road projects, from initial planning to final inspection, and provides specific advice for how bicycle advocates can get involved.

“As far as we know, no one has compiled material like this before,” said Fionnuala Quinn, the primary author of the guide, in the group’s press release last week. “I wanted to use my background in civil engineering to help demystify the road design process and to help people take advantage of occasions to incorporate bike facilities whenever roads projects are being designed. A crucial point to remember is that the earlier you provide input to the road design, the better your chances of having an effect on the final design.”

Chanda Causer, Alliance Grants Manager, said she was impressed with the content and quality of the guide, which represents an exciting, tangible product of the Advocacy Advance program. Although the agency details are specific to Virginia, the ideas and strategies in the guide are applicable to advocates across the country.

Download a copy from the Alliance Resource Library or the FABB website.

On the first day of Bike to Work Week, Consider Biking launched a commuter initiative backed by Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and more than 70 business leaders across central Ohio. To get things rolling, “Bikin’ Mike” Coleman and dozens of CEOs demonstrated their dedication with a 2.5-mile bike commute to celebrate the start of “2 BY 2012.”

The “2 BY 2012” campaign aims to nearly triple bicycle commuting in the Columbus area and it’s already garnered some big-name partners, including JPMorgan Chase and Nationwide Insurance. Working with the central Ohio corporations, Consider Biking will provide consultation to engage employees and encourage bike commuting. In addition to a $295,000 grant from The Columbus Foundation, the “2 BY 2012” initiative has received support from the Alliance for Biking & Walking through its Advocacy Advance Grant program.

“This is definitely the largest show of CEO support for bicycle commuting ever held in the United States,” said Jeff Miller, President and CEO of the Alliance for Biking & Walking.

“The ‘2 BY 2012’ initiative is our goal to get as many central Ohio citizens as possible to bicycle to work two days per month by 2012, which is the Columbus bicentennial,” said Jeff Stephens, executive director of Consider Biking. “Bicycle commuting two days per month would make Columbus the greenest city in the country. And two days per month is a reasonable goal that many can aspire to.”

Check out Consider Biking to read more about today’s launch event and the “2 BY 2012” initiative.