One Madison nonprofit uses bicycles to create a continuous cycle of service and involvement in the local community

From the front of the building located at 229 S. Fair Oaks Ave. on Madison’s eastside, it does not appear much happens here — a chipped sign advertising music lessons is painted in blue on the door, and a broken marquee hangs down across the building’s face. Although road traffic is heavy, passersby don’t seem to look twice at the slowly decaying structure until they come to the alley running parallel to the building. There, a brightly colored sign advertises an earn-a-bike program.

Around back, a silver garage door protects hundreds of bicycles in all shapes, sizes, colors and conditions. Some look brand new, ready to ride away, while others sit waiting, stacked in a pile soon to be cleaned and repaired or lie in hundreds of individual pieces.

“It’s always a mess in here, but none of us ever seem to mind,” says John Cronn, an on-site volunteer. “It helps us do exactly what we need to do.”

This is the organized chaos of Wheels for Winners, a nonprofit organization serving Madison and the rest of Dane County, which takes donated or recycled bicycles, fixes them up and gives them away mostly to low-income children who have met a specific community service requirement.

Since its founding in 1992 by former Dane County Board of Supervisors member Ruth Ann Schoer, the volunteer-run organization has created an astonishing community service movement. Through its successful combination of volunteerism, recycling unused bicycles and encouraging responsible, healthy and civic-minded actions among community members, Wheels for Winners not only meets community needs through service, but also empowers the community to do the same.

The organization repairs and gives away 150 to 200 bicycles per year, and more than 2,500 to date. Each and every bicycle, part and accessory that comes through the shop is donated by community members or comes from support through community grants, partnerships and memberships, such as with Community Shares of Wisconsin, a 66-member, nonprofit partnership fundraising and training organization.

Compared to the other Community Shares nonprofit members, Wheels for Winners is smaller and has no paid staff. Instead, the organization is run by an enthusiastic community of volunteers, both young and old, who just want to give back and lend support to their community.

“Having a smaller organization out there building those kind of opportunities from a really grassroots level I think is always impactful because it shows that, really, people can make a difference and can start something that helps their neighborhood,” says Emily Winecke, the communications and marketing director of Community Shares of Wisconsin.

In starting the earn-a-bike program, Wheels for Winners wanted to make youth the primary focus to capitalize on something already in young people’s interest as well as to encourage safety and greater involvement in their own communities.

Winecke says the program gets kids involved in the community, is helpful to them and provides them with bikes, “which is all about being healthy and having access to new places. It’s one of those things where it’s a win-win-win.”

Although Wheels for Winners primarily serves youth, anyone who comes to the shop having completed 15 hours of community service with the proper paperwork verified by a partner organization is eligible to receive a bicycle. Requiring community engagement ensures meaningful long-term connections with community members of all ages and valuable organizational partnerships that the nonprofit relies on for support.

Bike recipients not only receive a bicycle fitted perfectly to them by volunteers on site, but a helmet, a bike lock and a City of Madison bike registration sticker. But the organization takes greater pride in helping teach recipients the value of community service, self-reliance, responsible bike ownership, the joys of sustainable transportation and how to lead a healthier, more active lifestyle.

“When you get something that you’ve worked for, you have a greater … investment in what you have, and it also helps get people involved in the community — also outside of just biking [and] makes them expand their views,” says longtime volunteer and board member Fred Appleton, 80, who started volunteering with the organization 15 years ago.

Just like the bike recipients, volunteers at Wheels for Winners come from all walks of life, with different ages and different backgrounds. For Appleton, all it took was a search for ways to keep active in the summer of 2002 after retiring. As a self-proclaimed avid bike rider, he simply wanted to help promote cycling in his community and learn more about bike mechanics.

“I like bicycling,” Appleton says. “I wanted to learn how to fix them better, and I thought it was a wonderful program to get it primarily to children and get them interested in biking.”

UW-Madison students Becky Kann, 21, and Anna Walther, 19, discovered the organization through the Morgridge Center for Public Service’s Badger Volunteers, a semester-long program that pairs teams of students with Madison-based community organizations. The idea is to get college students to engage more with the community each week.

For Kann, who is now in her second year of volunteering with Wheels for Winners, it was the sustainability aspect that initially drew her in and has kept her there.

“All of the bikes that we get are from the community, they’re all recycled,” Kann says. “We make them better and give them back to the community, and I think that it’s, in general, just a really … cool opportunity to give back to the community and kind of take something that maybe would have been thrown out in the first place and just giving it back.”

For Walther, her love of bikes and the hands-on aspect of learning how to work on them caught her attention when signing up for a volunteer site. Coming to school in Wisconsin from St. Louis, Walther was drawn in by the Wisconsin Idea — the philosophy that education and ideas should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom. With that in mind, she knew she wanted to make volunteering and connecting with the Madison community beyond campus a priority.

“I just really love the Wisconsin Idea and the fact … you use what you’re learning through investing in the community and then you create that reciprocal relationship,” Walther says. “I’m learning a lot more from Wheels I, think, than Wheels is actually getting from me coming and volunteering. … It just really helps you grow as a person. Frankly, it’s just fun. It’s a great way to really get involved in your community and feel like you’re a part of something bigger, larger than yourself.”

As a whole, the Wheels for Winners volunteers log more than 2,400 hours of community service per year to rebuild the bicycles. In turn, their bike-earners annually provide more than 2,500 hours of varied service in their communities.

“We’re pretty open to any volunteer service that people do out in the community,” says Alicia Jepsen, 36, vice president of the Wheels for Winners board. “A lot of people do it with an organization, so like with Centro Hispano or Goodman [Community] Center or something like that. But they’re also free to just do volunteer service kind of on their own, kind of decide what they would like to do for the community.”

Through the various ways people volunteer throughout the community and through direct partnerships, the organization helps foster a continuous cycle of community service, strengthening those valuable reciprocal relationships.

“I think it’s good as an organization for us to feel like we’re connecting with others as well,” Jepsen says. “We can do our own little thing and fix up bikes, but then I think … it kind of completes the circuit per se to kind of have people out in their organization or their community center doing work. So it’s nice to make those connections with other organizations.”

As a recipient of a bike from Wheels for Winners herself, Jepsen knows firsthand just how much volunteering your time can pay off. After joining the organization as a volunteer in 2008, she traded in the hours she worked as a bike mechanic in the shop for an old cruiser that she used as her main mode of transportation while pregnant with her first child.

For Jepsen, however, what’s most inspiring is the cycle of community service the program promotes and seeing the overarching effects it has on people that come into the shop looking to trade in hours for a newly refurbished bicycle.

“I think one of the most powerful things is getting, especially kids, getting them out in the community doing service for others,” Jepsen says. “I think it’s very empowering to have kids feel like they can make an impact as well … and I think that’s a confidence builder for a lot of kids.”

For many of the Madison-area kids who receive bicycles, Wheels for Winners is their only hope for ever being a bike owner, as many come from low-income families.

“I remember having one kid who ended up walking here because he didn’t really have any other way to get out but then ended up being able to bike home,” Kann says. “Just being able to kind of use those bikes and have it really make an impact in someone is really cool.”

To other bike recipients, it’s more about using the bicycle to connect further with the community and help foster relationships among families.

“We had a really great mom and daughter come in from Centro Hispano, and they were just so sweet and just really excited to both get a bike. … It seemed like they were going to bike together, so that was kind of a neat thing just to see,” Jepsen says.

No matter the use for bicycles from Wheels for Winners, every bicycle that leaves the chaotic shop goes home as more than a bicycle. It leaves as a tool for allowing its riders to go further — not only in distance, but through empowering riders and giving them the confidence that they can make a difference in their communities.

Lauren Lewandowski is a senior double majoring in History and Journalism with a focus in strategic communication and reporting. She has always had a passion for writing, but she developed a deeper love for design since coming to college.

Beyond academics, Lauren spends the majority of her time on campus either promoting volunteering and community engagement as a marketing intern at the Morgridge Center for Public Service or sharing her immense Badger pride with campus visitors as an information guide behind the desks in the student unions. Away from campus, you can find Lauren enjoying the great outdoors on a hiking trail, kayaking down a river or road-tripping to all 59 National Parks.

Although she will always call Minnesota home, she hopes one day to combine her passions of history and communications and work in the Smithsonian Museums in D.C. or move out West and run communications for environmental nonprofits.