By Dave Schweidenback
Spring 2020 Newsletter
I was really excited coming into this spring as we had a great collection schedule. Over the last year and a half we have created many new exciting partnerships overseas: Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, Togo, Tanzania. We had demand from our current partners in Albania, Kosovo, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. And we had a constant stream of solicitations from potential new partners. It was such a nice plan: a great collection schedule and lots of potential shipments. Then the coronavirus struck.
We run public gatherings with over 100 people attending. We run work crews of five or six men who load containers for shipment. On March 16th I made the decision to shutter all operations until April 20th. On March 29th I extended the shutdown until May 31st. It is just necessary. [On May 14th, we canceled the last of our spring 2020 collections because of the closure of South Brunswick High School, where the collection was scheduled for June 7th.]
Shutting down our spring operations means shutting down half of our annual production. A significant piece of our finances is the actual collecting and shipping of bicycles. That $10 donation with each bicycle or sewing machine adds up. It is what we use not only to pay for the truck, but also to pay our rent and for essential services. Is it possible we could run collections in June? I just don’t know.
Assuming we receive no assistance during this crisis, Pedals for Progress is in a position to maintain paying our employees through September. One would hope that in September we will renew our operations and then restart the cash flow. There is going to be a lot of pent-up demand from our partners overseas that were really expecting shipments this spring. We have 500+ bikes that were scheduled to be loaded for shipment to Thailand on March 28th. We cannot safely put five men in a 40-foot metal box for five hours to load the container. Like our collections, shipments also need to be put on hold.
The newsletter we can alter right up to the day we launch it on the website. But the solicitation that we sent to you needs to go to the printer then get labeled and mailed. It was written a month before you see it, and a lot can happen in a month these days. Since I wrote the solicitation, I have applied for a grant from the Small Business Association, a grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Association and the Paycheck Protection Program through our bank. We have not yet received any of these funds; however I do think there will be help coming from the government and that should help with our overhead for a minimum of two months.
Usually in the spring we are really busy with collections and then we produce our newsletter as time frees up near the end of the collection season in June. This year I hope to have some early summer collections, but at the moment we have lots of free time. So we decided to produce our spring newsletter now during this lockdown so we will have more time to run collections when this situation is behind us.
As always, we send a prepaid remit envelope in case you wish to make a donation. In this time of social distancing and limiting contact, consider making your donation online at our website www.p4p.org. It is a little more expensive than the prepaid envelope but might be safer.
Stay safe. Stay home. Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace will be back as soon as it is safe.
Sincerely,
