So you wanna volunteer????

There are a variety of volunteer opportunities at the Free Ride! Recycle-a-Bike Center that cater to and make good use of the wide variety of skills that exist in our community.

General Volunteer Opportunities

Free Ride can always use help from skilled bike mechanics to rebuild and repair donated bikes, and to assist novice bike builders. However, you do not have to know anything about bikes to volunteer! In fact, most of our volunteers start out not knowing much about bike mechanics. For those who don't know a bottom bracket from a freewheel (but want to learn), a variety of tasks are needed in order to keep our shop and programs running as efficiently as possible. These tasks include stripping bikes, sorting parts, organizing and cleaning the shop, construction, making posters, etc. These are all good ways to get yourself acquainted with the bicycle, its parts, and the proper use and function of the variety of tools hanging in and around the shop. And as always, volunteer hours can be used to purchase parts or gain access to the shop, its tools and time with a real live bicycle mechanic. If you are interested in volunteering to learn, earn, or generally contribute, simply show up during open hours and talk to a shop coordinator to find out how you can plug in.

Volunteering for Free Ride Programs

In addition to our open shop hours, Free Ride conducts two other structured programs: Earn-a-Bike sessions for kids, and adult bike mechanics classes. Volunteers who like working with kids or teaching others, find these programs fun and rewarding. 

The more volunteers that we have, the more class sessions we can offer, enabling more people to get connected with bicycles.

Become a Bike Pittsburgh Member by Volunteering!!

Each hour that you work in our shop is valued at $5, and can be applied towards Membership in Bike Pittsburgh! (Note: you apply your Volunteer hours towards only one thing at a time, such as Membership, or earning a bike in our Earn-A-Bike program.)

Special Events

Free Ride also periodically hosts special events. We have had bike build-a-thons (where we try to build as many bikes as possible in a given time),  kid's bike repair days (where we repair bikes to be given away during the holidays to children in need), and other things like bicycle festivals, movies, and events. If you would like to be notified of these events, join our 'events email list' . Be sure to put 'subscribe free-ride' in the text or subject heading. 

P.S. we don't give our lists to ANYONE and we don't send many emails.