#GivingEveryday
The ZOIC Community is a generous, big-hearted bunch. So instead of making a plea for you to support another cause on #GivingTuesday, I encourage you to find ways to support bike causes in your community throughout the year. As inspiration, here are a few of the ways we at ZOIC have contributed our time, energy, product, and money to bike related causes over the past year.
Festival Fun
We believe in giving where we ride, and where our community does too! In conjunction with festivals we attended this year, we ran promotions in our booth and online that funded donations to trail development and advocacy across the country, including the following:
- Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund, Sedona MTB Festival, Sedona, AZ
- Monterey Off Road Cycling Association, Sea Otter Classic, Monterey, CA
- Friends of Raystown Lake, Dirt Rag Dirt Fest, Raystown Lake, PA
- Little Bellas, Women's MTB Day, programs nationwide
- Jeffco Outdoors Foundation, Golden Giddyup, Golden, CO
- Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, Evergreen MTB Festival, Issaquah, WA
- San Diego Mountain Bike Association, ZOIC Annual Warehouse Sale, Carlsbad, CA
- Moab Trail Mix, Outerbike, Moab, UT
We also made in-kind donations of product for raffle prizes and volunteer rewards to numerous trail associations and events in 2019. Trips for Kids Enabling people to enjoy cycling is our mission. Likewise Trips for Kids provides transformative cycling experiences to young people, especially those most in need. So last January when I learned that Trips for Kids would be celebrating their 25th anniversary by bringing 25 kids to the Sea Otter Classic to camp and ride, I eagerly offered to donate shorts for all of their participants. On Saturday April 20th we welcomed a gaggle of kids into our booth. I personally met and helped each of them select a brand new pair of ZOIC shorts; this opportunity to bring joy to so many kids was one of my highlights of the year! 
6th Annual Bike Repair Holiday Party
Next Tuesday, in lieu of an office ugly sweater party or secret Santa exchange, ZOIC staff, family, and friends will travel south from our HQ in Carlsbad to the Del Mar Fairgrounds where the Community Resource Center stages its annual Holiday Baskets event. This massive program provides the bounty of Christmas through donated goods and services to over 6,000 people in need, including children, seniors, and survivors of domestic violence. For our part we will take an afternoon to assemble, repair, and clean as many as 100 donated bikes that CRC will later make available for kids to choose as one of the gifts in their holiday “basket”.
That evening we will celebrate our hard work and the spirit of the season by heading to a nearby restaurant for dinner. During that dinner we will also raise a toast to you, our loyal ZOIC Citizens; we are grateful for your support of our brand, which is what allows us to give back in these ways and more. We also appreciate the grassroots efforts of so many of you to build and sustain better biking communities across the US, as well as introduce and assist developing riders. We encourage you to seek out more opportunities to support mountain biking and cycling related causes like these in the coming year, and as 2020 unfolds we pledge to engage in more #GivingEverday ourselves.
Happy Holidays!
/Paul
