Originally Posted by
johnny99
If you want more regular people to go on this ride, how about lowering the price? Your web site is a little confusing, but it looks like your minimum fee is $1800 per person for a one-day bike ride.
I know you want people to ask their friends and co-workers to pay for their vacation, but not everyone can or wants to do that. In this economy, most people don't put a real high value on "5-star luxury". Maybe you can offer a basic version of this bike ride for a lower price? You can probably get 1000 or maybe even 10,000 times as many people to participate for a $200 price, which is still a lot more money than most one-day charity bike rides cost.
Hey Johnny,
I hear where you are coming from, but our price point is set to maximize the amount raised for our charity,
Best Buddies International - the most important reason for putting on our event.
Due to route permitting, our relatively small staff size, and high quality service we offer our riders, we must limit our event to under 1,200 participants. While events like the LiveStrong Challenge can offer a rate around $250 and have nearly 4,000 riders, our limited field sizes means that our price point must be higher in order to best serve our yearly fundraising goal. For example, our last event raised 4.5 million dollars with 1,200 riders. Compare that to last year's LiveStrong Challenge in San Jose which raised 1.75 million with over 3,500 riders. So you see, having more riders at a lower cost isn't necessarily best for the cause. It's also important to note that unlike many other charity rides, all of our rider's fundraising dollars go directly back to our charity, Best Buddies, and not to cover marketing or lavish event production costs (we are extremely fortunate to have Audi behind the event for these expenses!). So you see, people aren't exactly soliciting donations to pay for a vacation, but to directly support Best Buddies programs to enhance the lives of people living with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
All that being said, we do reward the heck out of our riders for their outstanding fundraising efforts with a luxury event... and why not, in our minds, they've earned it.