BBSP Is Now Offering Emergency Response Grants

Photo by Roman Koester

The outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfairly affect vulnerable communities across the country, and we want to do our part to ease some of the strain. 

The PeopleForBikes Foundation, as part of the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP), is now offering Emergency Response Grants to non-profit or city-owned and/or operated shared micromobility systems to support operations or programming during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These grants of $7,500 to $10,000 are intended to provide quick support to eligible systems that are working in alignment with other emergency response measures in their communities. 

Eligibility

To be eligible:

• Applicant must be a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization or municipal government in the U.S.
• The applicant’s system is still operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• People are still permitted to ride bikes in your area.
• Businesses that provide bike share or servicing have not been identified as non-essential in your city.
• The applicant’s system is contributing to the COVID-19 emergency relief work in some way.

For your reference, examples of emergency relief work are:

• Providing free or reduced fares to healthcare workers, essential workers, or others.
• Reducing or eliminating overage or out-of-network fees.
• Adding stations, hubs or racks near essential destinations like operating transit lines, health service locations (e.g. permanent or temporary clinics or hospitals), grocery stores or pharmacies.

Please see the guidelines for more examples. 

Please note: BBSP will prioritize systems that have a demonstrated commitment to increasing access to and use of shared micromobility options in low-income or communities of color.

Submission

The Better Bike Share Emergency Response Grant application is intended to be brief with a short turn-around for award and implementation. 

The application is available on BBSP’s grants page. 

Timeline

April 7, 2020: Emergency Response Grant application available.

April 17, 2020: Emergency Response Grant applications due.

April 24, 2020: Grant awardees notified.

April 25-30, 2020: Brief grant agreement signed and submitted; checks mailed upon receipt.

August 2020: Final reports due. In place of a written report, we will schedule 30-minute calls with each grant recipient to discuss the impact of the grant, status of the system, stories and lessons learned.

Grantee Requirements

BBSP has the following requirements as a condition of the grant award:

• Grantees will work with BBSP’s communication team to share stories of their work, provide images for use in blogs, articles, and other publications, and collaborate on other efforts to share their successes.
• Grantees will be available for a full report check-in call no later than September 2020.

Access the Emergency Response Grant application.

Access the Emergency Response Grant guidelines.

If you have any additional questions about these guidelines or the Emergency Response Grant application, please direct them to Zoe Kircos, Director of Grants and Partnerships for PeopleForBikes, at zoe@peopleforbikes.org.

The Better Bike Share Partnership is a JPB Foundation-funded collaboration between the City of Philadelphia, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and the PeopleForBikes Foundation to build equitable and replicable bike share systems. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or sign up for our weekly newsletter. Story tip? Write farrah@peopleforbikes.org.