Washington Blade - October 24, 2003
Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Figures released by Food & Friends show that the June 19-22 cycling event raised $2.6 million from riders and supporters but incurred more than $2.3 million in overhead expenses, yielding only $265, 324 in net proceeds.

Food & Friends began the Tour de Friends ride this year as a replacement for the annual D.C. AIDS Ride, which was produced the previous seven years by the for-profit fund-raising firm Pallotta Teamworks.

Participation in the Pallotta ride declined dramatically in 2002, and Food & Friends Executive Director Craig Shniderman expressed hope that the non-profit Food & Friends would restore support for the AIDS ride by severing its ties to Pallotta and organizing the ride as an in-house event.

The Whitman-Walker Clinic, which had been co-beneficiary with Food & Friends in the Pallotta-produced rides, chose not to participate in the Tour de Friends event.

"The evidence shows that the number of people interested in doing this type of ride is off on a permanent basis," Shniderman said. "Unfortunately, there is no longer justification for doing this again."

In an Oct. 20 e-mail letter to the 693 riders and 308 volunteer support staff that participated in the Tour de Friends ride, Shniderman said, "Regretfully, we have decided that there will not be a Tour de Friends in 2004. We want the efforts of our supporters to maximally benefit the battle against AIDS and the 'MegaRide' no longer looks like the way to go."

The Tour de Friends ride traveled 330-miles between June 19 and June 22 from Raleigh, N.C., to D.C. Two other AIDS groups, the Alliance of AIDS Service of North Carolina and the Fan Free Clinic of Richmond, Va., participated as co-beneficiaries with Food & Friends. Under a prearranged agreement, Food & Friends put up two-thirds of the start-up costs and was to receive two-thirds of the $265,288 in net proceeds. The other two groups were to split the remaining one-third of the proceeds.

Food & Friends was founded 14 years ago as a non-profit group to deliver pre-cooked meals to homebound people with HIV and AIDS. In recent years it has expanded its meal delivery services to people with other serious diseases.

According to its Web site, the group now delivers "meals and groceries to more than 1,100 people living with HIV/AIDS and other life-challenging illnesses such as breast, lung and colon cancer through Washington, D.C. and 14 counties in Maryland and Virginia."

Switching gears

Shniderman said Food & Friends is organizing a contingent of 125 riders who will raise $1,900 each to participate next year in the 16-year-old Cycle Across Maryland ride, a recreational bike ride produced by a cycling group that promotes cycling and walking as an alternative to driving. He said One Less Car: the Maryland Campaign for Bicycling and Walking, the group that organizes the Maryland bike ride, has agreed to allow the Food & Friends contingent to "piggy-back" on its ride. Shniderman said Food & Friends' participation is part of a scaled back effort to continue the spirit of the D.C. AIDS rides and a way to raise some money for its services.

The ride consists of three, one-day bike trips beginning and returning each day to Emmitsburg, a town near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, located about 40 miles northeast of Hagerstown.

Shniderman said the 693 riders participating in this year's Tour de Friends ride marked a continuation of the downward trend in rider participation in AIDS rides throughout the nation and was the main cause of the poor financial return. The 2002 ride, the last year the D.C. ride was produced by Pallotta Teamworks, attracted 1,117 riders, a thousand fewer than the 2,118 riders who participated in the 2001 D.C. AIDS Ride.

Similar to last year, riders had to raise at least $2,500 to participate.

According to Shniderman, individual riders this year raised about the same amount of contributions as individual riders did last year, with some raising considerably more than $2,500.

He said this year's ride reduced overhead expenses by $675,000 compared to last year's ride, by cutting back on as many expenses as possible without comprising rider safety. But Shniderman said most costs associated with the ride are fixed and don't change significantly when the number of riders goes down. Among the costs that contributed to the high overhead, he said, was a staff of nine people hired to organize Tour de Friends as a separate , non-profit entity from Food & Friends. He said radio and newspaper advertising needed to recruit riders, and safety and logistical equipment needed to accompany the riders on a four-day, 330-mile journey from Raleigh, N.C. to D.C., also contributed to the overhead.

Shniderman said Food & Friends would release a detailed audit outlining the Tour de Friends expenses later this year.

"We were very disappointed that the outcome was not better," he said. "The expenses came down, but because the ridership was low, the income also dropped dramatically. "

AIDS activists have attributed the decline in participation in the D.C. AIDS rides to negative publicity surrounding the Pallotta firm. Critics accused the firm of reaping large profits through management fees of more than $200,000 for rides it produced throughout the United States and incurring huge overhead expenses. The firm has since gone out of business after nearly all of the local AIDS groups that once hired Pallotta Teamworks to produce their AIDS rides severed ties with the firm or discontinued the rides.

Snow, snipers hurt ridership

Shniderman said severe winter snow storms in the D.C. area, the commotion caused by the Washington sniper attacks, and the War in Iraq created distractions last fall and winter during the time Tour de Friends was seeking to recruit riders.

He said these developments also contributed to the poor rider participation.

Vic Basile, executive director of Movable Feast, a Baltimore AIDS service group, said his group plans to continue its own, smaller AIDS ride next year, which travels two days from Rehoboth Beach, Del., to Baltimore. Basile said the 50 riders that participated in this year's ride raised $82,000, all of which went to Movable Feast's programs. He said the ride cost about $52,000 to produce, but corporate sponsors picked up the entire amount, leaving all of the funds raised by the riders for his charitable group. Basile said his group is expanding the ride to 200 participants next year.

"We tried to learn from the trailblazing by Food & Friends," Basile said. "We figured out how to do this simply and inexpensively and on a small scale."

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