Group Volunteering

Dirty Bike Party

Bike Works offers group volunteering opportunities through our Dirty Bike Parties. These group bike cleaning sessions are open to any corporate groups, nonprofits, community organizations, affinity groups, volunteer communities, friends, or anyone you would like to clean bikes with! No bike expertise is necessary!

How does cleaning bikes help Bike Works?

Each year, Bike Works processes 5,000 to 8,000 donated bicycles. Of those, nearly 1,000 bikes are refurbished for our Bikes-4-All! giveaway program and hundreds more are resold in our shop and repaired in our programs. Each bike we refurbish can take anywhere from 1-2 hours to clean, which creates an operations bottleneck for our small-yet-mighty team of mechanics.  

Volunteers who roll up their sleeves and clean bikes create a meaningful impact, saving Bike Works staff a significant amount of time to focus solely on refurbishing and building bicycles. Your work helps put reliable bikes back into our community. Using provided tools, volunteers learn basic bike maintenance skills in a fun environment while supporting Southeast Seattle neighbors.  

During the few hours we’ll spend together, volunteers will be welcomed to the space, receive a bike cleaning tutorial, get the low-down on what Bike Works is about, and also have fun putting in the work as a team. We can even put some tunes on while you work! Pro tip: Columbia City offers some great food and drink options for further post-cleaning team bonding.

Each bike we refurbish can take anywhere from 1-2 hours to clean, which creates an operations bottleneck for our small-yet-mighty team of mechanics. 

When is the best time to schedule a Dirty Bike Party?

We generally schedule our cleaning sessions about twice a month on either Tuesday or Friday afternoons, between noon and 5 PM and can accommodate four to ten people in our largest classroom. We find a session around 3-hours work best. 

Note: if you are not able to recruit at least 4 people, we’d recommend letting us know and finding another date that will work for more people, to make good use of the time! Feel free to recruit up to 11 people, as we know there will always be cancellations at the last minute!

How should I prepare for the cleaning session?

We ask everyone to wear closed toe shoes and clothes that they don’t mind getting dirty.

No bike mechanic experience is necessary! Our staff will guide you through how to properly clean a bike.

Where does the Dirty Bike Party take place?

The cleaning session will be at our warehouse located around the back of the Hudson building at 3715 S Hudson St, Seattle, WA 98118. Please find street parking. We are very accessible by light rail and bus. Biking is always a great method too!

Please fill out the Dirty Bike Party request form to get connected!

If you have any questions, please reach out to Rod at rod@bikeworks.org for more info!