Someone PMed me and asked if it was OK to post a link to ask for donations for their charity event. For those of you who don’t know, you can ask for people to donate to a cause. As a rider for charity, you’re supposed to raise a certain amount of money in order to do the event.
Should we allow this?
0 voters
I’ve said No mainly because I don’t want to see lots of posts asking for sponsorship.
I wouldn’t mind a single thread for people to share their links if they so wish as I’m sure some people here would consider donating to a good cause.
I agree. If a thread was created specific to ‘charity’, then I could see it, as a way to keep the forum clean.
One of the reasons I really like TR podcasts and blog information is that you aren’t pushing sponsor stuff at us. Sure you talk about Specialized but its because you buy it yourselves. That matters.
A compromise might be to have a badge/portal that could link up to known bike related charity things (bikereg, activity, whatever) and let people set their charity on their profile and have it follow them around.
Everyone gets to shill more often, but no endless begging threads.
I voted “no” because, imho, there are plenty of other ways to raise funds for charity rides. All the social media sites where you are connected to people that (presumably) know you and care about you and the causes you care about. Moreover, I’m not inclined to donate to causes on behalf of people I don’t know IRL…I already have enough friends/family hitting me up for the exact same reasons and supporting them is enough drain on my wallet! 
As mentioned previously, a single thread would be fine but I suspect most people would ignore it. The most likely readers of that thread would be people posting for themselves and lingering to see what others posted. That might gain some cross-contributions, but at that point you might as well just donate to your own cause. 
I’m doing a charity ride later this year, I’ve done one every year since I started riding a bike. But I voted ‘no’ because, frankly, I don’t know you people, I would not like to see it, and I feel like this is not the place. I will raise funds like crazy in other venues, with people I know and can talk to about why it should matter to them and why existing funding isn’t enough… but I try to be sensitive to the medium, the context of the communication, and when it’s fine to ask and when it isn’t.
If you get to know someone on this forum enough that you’re riding with them, talk to them about your fundraising efforts. Otherwise, it will only be so much noise, and aside from not contributing to this forum it will get lost in the noise of everyone, everywhere, who is also raising funds for a charity ride.
If it is a TR User Community charity, such as what we did for the December 15th Worldwide Disaster Workout Day, I’m in for that idea. That seemed to work well and I was happy to support the charity.
If it is carte blanche create any sponsorship solicitation you want, a definite No.
As others suggest, a compromise is a single thread with the title Charity. What I would add in addition to that suggestion is that the moderator of other posts immediately delete any reference a user provides to a charity in the non-charity post with a PM to the user. We can’t allow a simple “see charity link” due to abuse.
Finally, I agree with other comments regarding how the podcasts are handled tastefully: mentioning what the podcast leaders use and other users use but not aggressively pushing those or any other products.
How about a monthly thread for events (any type, race, charity, fondo) so people can post what they are riding in. If it is a charity event then they can put a link in their “about me” section of their profile so people can check it out and support if they so choose.
This would serve a few purposes:
Singular thread for these kind of posts would be fine, or a subsection only for this kind of stuff.
A single post would be fine with me. However, the problem I see is that most people won’t know it exists, and this happens on all forums, unless the thread is pinned to the top. There are so many threads posted, that it can be easy to miss a single post. Not necessarily for or against, just some potential issues with this path.
Please no! I hate being bombarded by sponsorship requests. Keep that out of the forum.
I voted “other” because I would just do 1 thread, like the “deals” thread.
Voted ‘Other’ because I think they all need to go in a dedicated thread (if anywhere).
