The Alma Mater Society Bicycle Co-operative

Membership: The AMS Bicycle society consists of almost 500 members of the University of British Columbia’s undergraduate and graduate student population as well as the university’s staff, faculty, and other community members.
Activity: The Bike Co-op is dedicated to making the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus a better place for cyclists and their bikes through improving the cycling environment. This is accomplished through providing public bikes, operating a bicycle shop, educating people about bicycling issues and advocating upgrades to bicycle planning and policy
Organisational Form: The AMS Bicycle Co-op was incorporated as a student club through the Alma Mater Society (AMS) at the University of British Columbia, (UBC) Vancouver, BC in May, 1998.
Area Served: The University of British Columbia Campus, and surrounding communities when required.

“This story of the AMS Bike Co-op is given with gratitude to the BC Institute of Co-operative Studies, and to Dr. Ian MacPherson, who remains a great inspiration to all.” (Kari Hewett, 2001)

Background

The Alma Mater Society Bicycle Co-operative was developed because founding members believe that cars create pollution, take up a lot of space on roads and parking lots, and generate congestion. Bicycles, on the other hand, are a wonderfully efficient, self-propelled alternative to driving Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOV) and Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV). Bicycles are also economical, financially accessible for most, and fun to ride.

The Bike Co-op empowers members and the community by sharing knowledge amongst themselves about mechanics, art, and touring, as well as pedalling to save the environment in public rides, including their monthly event called “Critical Mass”. All this is done within a friendly community of diverse people.

The Bike Co-op is comprised of an educational component and a business component:

The Bike Hub (location: 6357 Agronomy Road) serves as a programme, research, and educational development
outlet where people can access educational programs as well as services. Activities that run out of the Hub
include:

• Tuesday night “Purple and Yellow Work Parties”
• Wednesday Bike Care Clinics: these night repair clinics are free for members and offer 4 different types of basic repair skills, which follow the same rotation every month. 
• Bike Repair 101: offered on selected Saturdays, it is a comprehensive five-hour crash course in basic bicycle fix-it skills. 
• Special “Women’s Bike Repair 101” and other tutorials may be arranged upon request.

The Bike Kitchen (location: Student Union Building (SUB) loading dock, north side of the basement) is a non-profit business that includes a full-service bike repair and retail shop. The Bike Kitchen is modelled on Our Community Bikes in Vancouver, BC. The system offers cyclists the use of tools and equipment to fix their own bikes for an hourly fee of $6.00. Cyclists can also receive the “talking assistance” of a mechanic for $11.00 per hour, fix their own bike with “hands on” help from a mechanic for $17.00 per hour, or have a mechanic fix their bike for $38 per hour. Members receive a 10% discount on new parts. Both new and used parts are sold at competitive prices.

The most popular and well-known aspect of the Bike Co-op is the Purple and Yellow public bike program. Volunteers and students hired with monies from a work-study program, recycle and reuse abandoned and donated bikes in order to turn them into a fleet of bikes members can use to cruise around campus. Over 200 bikes have been built, decorated, and sent out into the lanes of UBC by these members. Bikes are secured to racks using a universal lock system. As past president and current (2001) education director, James Z. Zhuang says: “the Purple and Yellows are the best thing that’s ever happened to the UBC university grounds!”

Students can also learn some of the fundamentals of co-operative governance through being elected to the Bike Co-op’s Board of Directors. Other activities fluctuate with the ever-changing student population and administration involved. From Bicycle Art shows to weekend camping trips, the things the Bike Co-op does are a result of the hard work and dedication of our volunteers. These activities are not only for fun, but are also an attempt to raise awareness of transportation issues.

The actual organisational format of the AMS Bicycle Co-op is a very loose co-operative structure. Although the principles of co-operation are observed (mutual assistance; one member, one vote; no restriction on membership, etc.), AMS is not legally incorporated as a co-operative. This isbecausethe AMS Bicycle Coop is required under AMS legislation to be constituted as a “Club” through the Alma Mater Society1, which is a non-profit society owned and directed by the students of the University of British Columbia. Some of the standard requirements for membership in the AMS involve having an elected, accountable student Executive which is made up of a President, Vice-President and a Treasurer. A Board of Directors, which is directly responsible to the AMS for most aspects of the group’s operations and actions, is also required. In practice, the co-op’s decisions are consensus-based and members are invited to participate in determining direction,
policy-making and other activities. Involvement from outside the UBC community is also very welcome.

The Bike Co-op was developed to serve the UBC community; however, depending on the event, it may also serve people throughout the Greater Vancouver area. Members and volunteers work with a number of other community-focused cycling sector organisations in Vancouver, such as Our Community Bikes, Better Environmentally Sound Transportation, and the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition. AMS also co-operates with organisations from other sectors, such as, the East Vancouver’s “Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House” and VanCity’s “Place for Youth.”

The original name for the co-op was the AMS Bike Co-operative, which was formed in May of 1998. It was so-titled, co-founder Ted Buehler recalls, because the bikes were held in common by the members of the organisation. The start-up funding for AMS was a $10,000 grant provided by the UBC TREK Program Centre 2. This funding was granted in an effort to help achieve the Official Community Plan for the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which had as an objective the substantial decrease in traffic congestion on routes to and from the UBC campus. To this end, a small fleet of approximately 30 Purple and Yellow public bicycles were built that summer for on-campus transportation. By Autumn 2001, the fleet had increased to a total of 230 bicycles. In a university community that has a population of 37,000 undergrad and graduate students, it is clear that cycling is, for many people, the most sensible mode of transportation to, from and around the campus. Neither the University grounds nor the general traffic infrastructure leading to UBC were built to handle the volume of traffic created by students, faculty, staff and visitors who commute daily to campus by car.

Over the years, the Bike Co-op has operated with a fluctuating budget. The budget primarily has depended upon support from various organisations to which the Bike Co-op has applied for assistance. These include:

• University of British Columbia: UBC TREK Program, Walter Gage Fund, the Innovative Projects Fund, and work study funding 
• Province of British Columbia: Environmental Youth Team, Youth Community Action, Student Summer Works, and BC Hydro 
• Government of Canada: Human Resources Development Canada 
• Co-operative sector funding: VanCity Credit Union (Community and EnviroFund grants) and Mountain Equipment Co-op

Revenue is also generated from the fully functional non-profit shop, the Bike Kitchen, which is open seven days a week and has its own staff and managers. A popular bike rental program operated during the summer of 2001 also generated revenue. Co-op members believe that it generated more funds partly because of a lengthy transit strike.

History

In the early 1990s, the University of British Columbia planned to expand local housing and commercial developments, which would have involved clear-cutting a section of the forested land adjacent to the campus. One of the issues that became increasingly clear from the discussions on the proposed development was the need for a grassroots alternative to current transportation challenges. The City of Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Regional District forced UBC to implement new sustainable transportation strategies in exchange for permission to expand. This political climate facilitated the successful creation of the Bike Co-op.

Meetings to look at a variety of sustainable transportation options with various authorities on campus were initiated prior to the co-op’s establishment. Participants included Gord Lovegrove, Transportation Planner; Moura Quayle, Dean of Agricultural Sciences; interested students, and representatives from the Alma Mater Society. These sessions tackled issues such as how and where to house the co-op and the workspace it requires, co-op volunteers, and constitutional arrangements.

Although the central goal of the co-op is to improve the UBC cycling environment, how this is achieved changes from year to year, and even from term to term because the movement of students in and out of the coop gives it a very dynamic character. What also remains constant is that the co-op must deal with funding issues and AMS compliance issues, such as, holding regular Executive elections, filing budgets, and acting within the mandate of the Alma Mater Society. Currently, the co-op operates on budgets that are drawn up yearly. However, the Bike Kitchen hopes to set up a five-year business plan in 2002.

Darren Haines, the Bike Co-op’s President for the 1999/2000 academic year, is currently the hard-working General Manager of the Bike Kitchen. He recalls helping to make the club into a co-op to make it more inclusive while still conforming to the somewhat hierarchical structure required by the AMS. During his tenure, The Bike Co-op received funding from the provincial government’s E-team programme, which it used to promote and fund the Purple and Yellow (P & Y) programme. The programme incorporated volunteer labour, as well as, paid student trainees to collect and build the P & Y bikes. This volunteer involvement fostered a welcome feeling of community and inclusiveness, in addition to being an empowering peer-learning situation for the students.

This year (2001), the new president Erica Mah, feels that one of their most important discoveries has been to “hive off” small sub-sets of the P & Y fleet to other like-minded groups, such as the UBC Farm, which works with another student club on campus, the Natural Food Co-op. In this way, the Bike Co-op continues to contribute to others, while encouraging local group responsibility amongst the organisation’s members to look after and care for their bikes. Pilot programmes in this area are already underway with some friendly student residences on the UBC campus.

Perhaps one of the Bike Co-op’s greatest challenges, however, is also one of its greatest strengths: the “collective” is almost entirely student-run and operated. The original handful of students came from a variety of academic areas, including planning, engineering, and math, but they all brought enthusiasm for and a love of bicycles. Today, the co-op boasts an even wider student base. Even during mid-term exams, essays, and labs, members find the energy to keep the co-op and its activities going. This dedication could serve as a good example to the co-operative sector purely by virtue of its enthusiasm and quirky success. Members and employees measure their success in a few different ways. In the Bike Kitchen, having a steady flow of customers and a positive credit balance are goals. In the services and education side of the Co-op’s mission, the number of working P & Y bikes, people attending bike maintenance workshops and memberships numbers are more important indicators of success. Active volunteers are also highly valued. Over the past four and a half years, the main difficulty has been maintaining continuity through the inevitable student turnover which occurs in a university environment.

The “glue” that holds it all together is the contagious enthusiasm that comes from working with and riding bicycles. People (re)discover their love of such a simple “vehicle”. The artful group of participants at the Bike Co-op also offers a variety of programmes and activities which stimulate the growth and development of the co-op.

Structure

As a student-run club of the Alma Mater Society of UBC, the AMS Bicycle Co-op has a formal constitution that complies with AMS regulations. The co-op is primarily responsible to its “parent” organization, the AMS. In early 2001, members of the co-op had involved discussions with the AMS in order to explore the possibility of establishing a different kind of “club” that would have much more of the co-operative structure as part of its constitutional make-up. Because achieving this goal would probably need a few years of work (referendums required, bylaw changes, etc.), it was agreed that it would be put on the back burner for possible future consideration. As a result, the current executive structure has a President, Vice-President and Treasurer, in addition to up to seven Directors-at-large. Even with this framework, the co-op’s actual practice is to use consensus among members present for decision-making and to share responsibility for the various projects and activities. In this sense, it is very much a working Board that deals with all the education and services aspects of the co-op. The Bike Kitchen is kept semi-autonomous, however, and is run by paid managers and student employees who liaise with and send reports to the executive on a regular basis.

Most of the daily Bike Co-op administration and co-ordination takes place at the Hub where they employ one full-time and four part-time workers. Some Board members do take paid positions, depending on the available funding. Members are encouraged to take an active role in policy development, planning, and co-op activities such as P & Y maintenance. Members receive a discount at the Bike Kitchen, have access to repair classes, and enter into a great group of fellow co-op members with whom they can share their dreams. Treasurer and Bike Kitchen mechanic Jeff Burton jokes that there aren’t expectations for members so much as there are “hopes” that they will continue to generate ideas and help carry them out. The members try to ensure this by inviting new people to attend annual and general meetings and to actively take part in the co-op’s decision-making processes. Other openings for involvement are outings and rides, festivals, art experiments, shows, and other social events.

There are no shares in the AMS Bicycle Co-op. Rather, because the co-op is incorporated through the AMS, the Bicycle Co-op charges an annual membership fee that costs twice as much for other members as it does for registered UBC students. This amount is pro-rated throughout the school year starting off at $20/$10 for a full year from September 1st to August 31st the following year. On January 1st, the fee drops to $15 and $7, then on May 1st the price becomes $10/$5 for a “summer” membership. Additionally, members who wish to have access to the fleet of Purple and Yellow public bikes are asked to contribute at least three volunteer hours learning how to fix and maintain the bikes.

A large, vibrant network helps to sustain and in turn is sustained by the Bike Co-op. In addition to the people, groups and organisations already mentioned, its members have established links with other non-profit, nongovernmental organisations such as BikeCartAge, the Sanctuary Foundation, local elementary and high schools, UBC Campus Security, the Environmental Youth Alliance and others. Some of these groups have directly benefited through receiving parts and whole bike donations, bike mechanic workshops, “bike blender” demonstrations, and small seminars on how to start a similar group. At an earlier point in its development, the Bike Kitchen even offered a “P & Y building” scholarship of $500!

What’s Next?

The current executive has some very basic short-term goals: to fix their computers and to continue to apply for funding. Attracting more committed members is also an ongoing objective. The main challenge of the co-op is to keep a steady flow of money coming in, avoiding debt and finding enough time to keep up with all the enthusiastic endeavours of its diverse membership. Therefore, establishing long-term core funding as well as procuring a welder to help produce more “re-cycled” projects, like pedal powered fruit juice blenders, are longer term goals for this student driven club. The Bike Co-op members are learning that in order to continue their work, and then to sustainably expand the co-op, they must focus their energy, and increase their resources and their base of committed members. Without these components, the ever-present challenges of financial instability and student turnover could make it possible that the Co-op would flounder and eventually fold.

Lessons Learned

The collected wisdom and lessons learned in this section reflect the thoughts of the current core members of the co-op and, as such, these reflections might be quite different from those of the founding directors. As students, members have found it an invaluable education to face the challenges of dealing with bureaucracy and have learned how important it is to talk to the “right” people. In addition, an intriguing “study” in consumer behaviour has helped members to learn more about how to deal with various types of people. The AMS Bicycle Co-op also receives many emails and telephone calls and has received inquiries from folks intrigued by the structure and functioning of the co-op. Some of these people are interested in exploring how to start a similar operation in their own community. While the formula and conditions that made this very dynamic organisation possible may not lend itself to duplication, today’s executive has some very useful, universal advice: you’ll need to find a core of committed people, come together around common interests, and be very adept at and enthusiastic about partnerships and networking.

Acknowledgements

The AMS Bike Co-op thanks the following organisations for their generous support:

• The UBC TREK Program through the Campus Planning and Development Department for its initial gift of $10,000
• The UBC Faculty of Agricultural Sciences for workshop space 
• The UBC Plant Operations for a lot of purple and yellow paint 
• The UBC Food Services and the Alma Mater Society for providing a space for the Bike Kitchen in the SUB 
• Our Community Bikes, who have offered expertise 
• Various campus residences who donated abandoned bicycles 
• Gord Lovegrove (Engineer, TREK Program manager), Ted Buehler (PhD student in the School of Community and Regional Planning), and others in the UBC community who gave the Bike Co-op invaluable guidance

Further funding was also provided near the beginning of the Co-op’s establishment by VanCity ($5000), the E-
Team ($35,000), and BC Hydro ($15,000).

Endnotes

1 www.ams.ubc.ca
2 www.trek.ubc.ca

Case Study Information

This case study was prepared for the BC Institute for Co-operative Studies by members of the AMS Bike Co-op. An inspirational story of co-operation, innovation, and commitment to sustainable communities, it is a welcome addition to a growing collection of stories about co-operatives and co-operative development in British Columbia. The information for the study was gathered and woven together by Kari Hewett, former AMS Bicycle Co-op “Human Resources Co-ordinator and Internal/External Liaison”, 8 November 2001. Ted Buehler (co-founder), Erica Mah (President and Co-ordinator), Jeff Burton (Treasurer and Bike Kitchen mechanic), Shannon Bundock (Volunteer Co-ordinator), James Zhuang (Educational Coordinator), and Darren Haines (General Manager, the Bike Kitchen) also provided Kari with information.

Researchers: Kari Hewett and AMS Bicycle Co-op members
Date of research: 2001
Author: Kari Hewett
Date of writing: 2001
Editing: BCICS editorial group
Supervision: Kathleen Gabelmann, BCICS Research Co-ordinator

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