This blog post is part of a series on sessions at the 2014 Alliance Leadership Retreat. 

Image: table7/Flickr

Biking and walking advocacy in the suburbs often merits different operations and campaign strategies than advocacy within an urban core. An organization focused on one city will look drastically different from an organization with an expanded regional focus and multiple chapters or working groups.

In this session at the Leadership Retreat, advocates shared their experiences with developing regional structures and honing tools for successful advocacy in suburban communities.

The session was led by Corinne Winter, Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition; Cynthia Armour, Project Manager at Bike East Bay; Melody Geraci, Deputy Director at the Chicago area's Active Transportation Alliance; and Cynthia Rose, Director and board chair at Santa Monica Spoke. 

Three regional advocacy structures

The group discussed a variety of different ways to approach advocacy across an entire region. Three structures emerged as models, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.  

1. The Singular Model

The Active Transportation Alliance is the only regional biking, walking and transit advocacy organization that uniquely focuses on the Chicago metro area (city and suburbs). As a singular force within that area, Active Trans serves as the primary advocacy voice for the entire region.

Active Trans forms relationships with individual riding clubs within the greater Chicago area – some of which have an interest in advocacy activities – and with a handful of very small, hyper-local advocacy groups. They also have alliances and partnerships with other like-minded non-profits in areas such as environment, health, urban planning and others. But by and large, there is a scarcity of organized local active transportation advocacy groups in the region, and Active Trans occupies the role as lead advocate.

Benefits of the "singular" model include minimizing competing priorities and eliminating the need to establish rules of governance for advocacy across multiple organizations. You work under a single name, leading to strong brand recognition. You're also able to demonstrate progress across an entire region, rather than showing success town by town.

On the downside, the “singular” model can lead to challenges with organizational reach and capacity, particularly in a very large area like Chicagoland that has so many separate units of governance. For this reason, Active Trans focuses on providing technical assistance and expertise to help communities establish Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committees, write an active transportation plan or institute certain policies – and then hopes to leave the town in a place to advocate for itself. Additionally, Active Trans develops and activates campaigns specifically tailored to the suburban experience that have broad applicability.

2. The Coral Reef Model

Bike East Bay is like coral, forming symbiotic relationships with other organizations within their regional ecosystem.

Bike East Bay represents two counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, encompassing over 50 cities and towns. They have both formal and informal relationships with smaller, more localized, special interest groups and volunteer associations that focus on bicycling issues. Most of those "local working groups" are city-specific, like Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, Albany Strollers and Rollers, and Bike Walnut Creek. But others, like the Original Scraper Bike Team and Red Bike and Green, are harder to categorize. Bike East Bay encourages the growth of these groups and brings all of them together in order to advance region-wide priorities while being effective at the local level.

Local working groups in the East Bay range in terms of organization and size. Some have been around for years, have board members, websites, and regular meetings. Others consist of a Facebook page or a meetup group, and gain momentum based on active projects or events. 

Bike East Bay's role is to help nurture these local groups and provide them with guidance, expertise and resources in order to grow and strengthen the bicycling community. There are currently 9 Local Working Groups in the Bike East Bay ecosystem. 

A regional organization may choose to form local teams of energized supporter who want to volunteer to advocate in their communities. While organizing local teams can be time-intensive, the organization can choose to lend more support to campaigns that offer the biggest potential wins, address equity goals, serve especially under-resourced communities, or stand to increase membership numbers.  

Advocates from Bike East Bay noted that local working groups can often be more effective on a local level than the regional organization ever could.

"Our local champions are the ones who know best what streets need attention, which city staff or elected official we need to talk to, and where to concentrate our efforts," said Cynthia Armour, Project Manager with Bike East Bay. "Our staff size and capacity limits us, and having effective advocacy leaders in different cities enables us to extend our reach."

East Bay advocates readily acknowledge that there are still a lot of un-answered questions. Split memberships and revenue sharing can be a headache to figure out. And as a 501(c)(3), Bike East Bay needs to make sure that none of their affiliates are endorsing candidates during election season. 

Is your advocacy organization looking to adopt a "coral reef" regional structure? Check out Bike East Bay's Local Working Group Handbook in the Alliance Resource Library (requires member login). 

3. The Chapter Model  

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition practices a chapter model, the most formalized regional advocacy structure. Cynthia Rose of Santa Monica Spoke – one of LACBC's oldest and largest local chapters – shared more details about how this model works in LA County and how other organizations could take similar approaches. 

When a group of people gets together within LA County to organize for better bicycling, they have the option of either striking out on their own or organizing to become an LACBC chapter. Choosing to become a chapter has the advantage of inheriting a clear path to organized advocacy. Here's how LACBC's chapter model works:

• Incorporation: Each chapter is extended 501(c)(3) status by its affiliation with LACBC. The chapters are also covered under the insurance of the parent group. Clear guidelines are set as to the responsibilities and expectations of compliance for the chapters.
  
• Bylaws and mission: Every chapter adopts its own chapter bylaws. The bylaws can articulate a unique mission, but they must be compatible with the LACBC mission as a whole.
• Governing body: Each chapter elects its own governing body or "Steering Committee." That organized body chooses a chair, secretary, and a Chapter Representative to act as liaison to the LACBC Regional Caucus Committee. (The chair and the Chapter Representative can be different people or the same person.) The Chapter Representative serves on the LACBC's regional caucus committee; that committee then elects one person to serve on the LACBC board. The regional caucus committee member of the LACBC board is tasked with representing the chapters to LACBC. Cynthia Rose currently fills this role.
• Funding: Membership in municipalities that have a local chapter are automatically assigned to that chapter. Membership revenues (whether brought in by the chapter or LACBC) are split 50/50 between the local chapter and LACBC. Of other dollars that the local group raises, the local group receives 90% and 10% goes to LACBC. Local chapters are encouraged and mentored in applying for grants; 90% of awarded grants go directly to the chapter organization.
• Brand: Chapter organizations can have their own identity. Local groups get all the benefits of operating locally while also reaping the benefits of LACBC's regional name recognition. Advocates are also currently working to create an official LACBC Local Chapter badge. 
• Advocacy: Chapters run their own local campaigns with support from LACBC. Chapters also responsible for supporting LACBC regional campaigns where appropriate.

The LACBC chapter model has the great advantage of creating an organizing pathway for new local efforts: new advocates get clear next steps and incorporation goals. It's no surpise, then, that LACBC has quickly grown from just a few chapters to over 13 local groups with several new chapters on deck.  

For more details, check out the LACBC local chapter governing documents in the Resource Library (requires member login).

Is your advocacy organization looking to adopt a chapter model like LACBC? Cynthia recommends acting sooner rather than later. By the time LACBC formalized the chapter model in their bylaws and operations, they were already working in partnership with several informal chapter groups. For better or for worse, this extended the amount of time that it took to truly institutionalize the chapter model. 

Los Angeles advocates are also close to finalizing The Chapter Resource Manual, which will serve as a dynamic document of all the chapter templates, responsibilities, and up-to-date resources for new and existing chapters.

Getting started in the 'burbs

Advocates had plenty of suggestions for getting started with biking and walking advocacy in the suburbs.

Find a denser area where mode shift is most possible. There was general agreement that it helps to start in a central neighborhood with better walkability, more mixed-use development, and more businesses. If your community has a commuter rail system, a place near a station may be an attractive place to start. 

Get five people together. Who is interested in improving walkability and bikeability in their own community? Find those people and help them organize.

Start at the policy level. Find out who is designing the streets, and work to make inroads at that agency. You may even have to start small with a bad project, just to make a first step. It may also be helpful to work with your transportation management agency or metropolitan planning organization. 

Start with walking. Especially in areas with people who are vocally concerned about separated bicycle infrastructure or Agenda 21, safe and accessible walking can be an easier issue area for common ground.