Back at the turn of the last century, it was bicycle clubs that helped to bring about the first roads in America. With well over 1,000 such organizations, in this Nation’s big cities, they held great sway and had an outsized influence on all matters political. In fact, being a member of a bicycle club was a status symbol.
And with all the benefits we have planned for our NBG Membership, we will return our bike club members to that lofty position in society. Our strength in numbers will deliver the kind of results that will cause a new Renaissance for bicycling. This at a time when we have no alternative but to lessen our dependence on fossil fuel.
While most any charity or nonprofit organization believes their cause is so important that vast numbers of people will join them once they are known about, if we can secure no limit on funding, for us this will become the case. This is so, because with the top-tier PR firm we use a long chapter to explain, all of the possibilities we talk about in this book will be far more than airy fairy dreams. When not limited by budgetary constraints, all of what we present will become real because the power of our vision will be fortified by the power of money.
As we are hire staff, as I show you in the appendix in “If Money Were No Object”, on a parallel track, we need to initiate a membership campaign that will grow our numbers. This is important for many reasons. To begin, a large associateship gives authority to our effort - it establishes us as a force to be reckoned with.
When we can say we are an organization of 25,000 members, the reception we will get from people we are working with will continue to improve as we increase our numbers to the hundreds of thousands and quite realistically, since we are a national organization, to millions of associates. People listen when they become aware that you are a part of an organization made up of large numbers of people.
It will give us leverage with city officials and transportation directors. It will be easier for us to have our needs met with whatever problem we are trying to solve. It will attract people, causes and organizations that come to us for our approval or assessment of their own programs or efforts. It will make us the big kid on the block who, whenever we speak, people will turn their hearing up. It will also give us much authority when we are pushing for easements or suggesting road diets, etc. To be able to show our size will have a great influence on all potential stakeholders.
Having a large membership body will make us a juggernaut, as in time, if we can get enough money behind us, we will take on the significance of being a small country. Businesses and their marketers will come to us for words of testimony.
Nor is this an unrealistic thought. Most everyone can or does ride a bicycle. Most everyone wants the quality of life benefits that will result from our National Bicycle Greenway and the example it will set for all the other cities in America. Our effort cuts across race, gender and age lines. With but the exception of the rare antisocial individual committed to destroying society, most everyone wants to make it easier for each of us to move about under our own power - which by extension is the benefit the NBG will bring about.
When our PR firm regularly reminds the people of this Nation that how we move about is driving the planet to extinction, they will also show that actually pedaling a bicycle is one solution to our woes. Once they hammer this message into our collective consciousness, becoming a part of the NBG will feel like an important civic duty. To become a card-carrying member of the NBG will become a source of pride as it demonstrates one’s responsibility to Mother Earth.
There will be many benefits to joining the NBG, including discounts offered by participating merchants. In addition to the price reductions our storekeepers will provide, talked also about in the chapter after next, one of the biggest reasons, people will join the NBG is for the significantly reduced rates on lodging (to hostel rates) in the Anchor Cities along our route. This is discussed in the following chapter on NBG lodging.
Being able to take advantage of all the benefits of NBG Membership will be easy. Toward that end, there will be an online form that will be simple to fill out. Once our program reaches that point, to get the key fob with a magnetic stripe that contains all the information they will have entered, they then just have to go to any into any of our participating merchants with the ID code they will have received to redeem it.
For as little as $10 total, people can buy this book as they also get themselves signed up as an NBG member. They will also have the option of being seen at the webpage we have created for this called NBG Subscribing Members. If they choose to be seen there, this page will only display their picture and name and yet if they want more of their contact information to show, there will be an area where they can provide us with it.
To get this ball rolling, the first 1,000 people who join us will be registered as Charter Members for whom their annual dues will never increase. This will set in place the momentum we need to keep increasing our numbers. In exchange, all new affiliates will also get a free online copy of the book that launched the NBG - “Awake Again”. What can also be thought of as my autobiography, “Awake Again” is the story of how my ego did the impossible (as I suffered through this nightmare, God proved that with His help I have no limits, that all of us can make the National Bicycle Greenway real). It is the true story of my return from a coma, paralysis and clinical death and the torturous rehabilitation that preceded my two bike rides across America.
Once we launch our lodging and merchant discount programs, new members will then get the NBG key fob discussed above. As they use it for discounts with participating NBG business members, these purveyors of commerce will grow and grow as our programs unfold. The numbers of merchants offering discounts will also increase because we will be calling attention to them on the POI Maps we talk about in a soon upcoming chapter.
We also hope to be be able to bring in new members through Charity Choice. Charity Choice has been around since 2004. They began by making it possible for people to donate unused portions of a gift card (e.g., Starbucks, Walmart, North Face) to the nonprofit of their choice. For that matter, the entire gift card itself can be gifted to 2500 different 501c3 charities. As of May 2023 we are listed with them.
We will also begin a program to enroll corporate memberships. Here is the letter we have written for the new Membership Director we hope to soon have fully contracted -
Our Director, Martin Krieg, began beating the drum for a coast-to-coast bike way in 1987 after his last bike ride across America. Toward that end, for seven years, his small company, Cycle America, published 60,000 books that spoke to that mission in four different parts of California. In 1994, he obtained nonprofit status and changed the name to National Bicycle Greenway (NBG). Beyond their much celebrated National Mayors Ride, however, he and his group obtained little traction for the pedal connection they foresaw.
Because of the friendship he developed with the man known internationally as Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin, for the work he had done in transforming Indianapolis, in 2018 he moved the NBG there. Established now in the Greenway Capital of the World, Krieg can finally show what is possible for the rest of America. With that in mind, he plans to have his book “NBG Blueprint - Interconnecting America with a Network of Coast-to-Coast Bicycle Villages” complete on Feb 5, 2024, with a soft publication release on Dec 1, 2023.
A former accountant he is the author of the once much celebrated book, “Awake Again”, which details his two bike rides across America, the second of which reached 40 million people, after overcoming a two-month coma, clinical death, and right side paralysis. With his new book as our blueprint, we are beginning to roll out the membership program that will help us connect San Francisco to Washington, DC, and the 18 major American cities in between, with a bicycle highway.
Here's how you can be a part of this movement. We are offering charter memberships for the first 500 businesses that come aboard. If you want to be listed as one of our sponsors at bikeroute.com, and can make a decision to join us today, the cost is……