That was far and away the most successful Hootenanny to date. We sold it out (165 tickets plus our 30 volunteers in the house) and over 10 of our partner organizations were present. We had a goal to raise $15,000, and we did it! We brought in a little over $15,500. And that is thanks to everyone that came out and donated, buying a ticket, entering the raffle, getting some merch, or straight donating during the direct ask.
Read on for some of the inspiring words from the evenings speakers - VP Ashley Lyons, ED Glenn Schneider, and volunteer/guide Serena.
Welcome — Ashley Lyons
Y’ALL! Welcome to our 5th annual Hootenanny! <woop woop!!>
We hope everyone’s enjoying the music by the Wild Scallions, the amazing tacos from Casa del Pueblo and the fantastic beers from our friends here at Midwest Coast. Don’t forget to tip the amazing bartenders helping us out back there!
First – I'ma take a quick moment to get real with y’all --
Seeing the enthusiasm of this community tonight is incredibly heartwarming – the joy, warmth, kindness, and curiosity that you bring to those around you and the nature around us…y’all are what makes this organization so great.
And the support you all bring tonight and throughout the year for our mission is what keeps the dream of Out Our Front Door a reality that we can all be proud to be a part of and that we can continue to welcome more folks to enjoy right alongside us.
Second – I also want to shout out the gang of volunteers who helped put this event together
Hootenanny Volunteer Team – can yáll raise your hands?! THANK YOU for your work these past weeks and tonight. <applause>
Third – Some info about our SUPER amazing RAFFLE PRIZES
You've got a chance to win BIG. We've got over 21 different raffle prizes all valued at over $7,500! Volunteers who are selling raffle tickets – put those hands up!! Find these folks and purchase some raffle tickets to win some amazing goods including 2 bikes and the big 3 day gravel bike tour in Wisconsin (compliments of Wheel and Sprocket).
Don't forget, we’ve got some awesome fun and games set up by the booths for kiddos and kiddos at heart.
Main Spiel/Direct Ask — Glenn Schneider
Welcome everyone to The Hootenanny Vol 5! My name is Glenn Schneider Jr, and I’m the co-founder and Executive Director of Out Our Front Door. Goodness, that almost makes me a little weepy everytime I say that outloud.
Thank you so much for being here. And for your support of OOFD. Whether you ride with us, ride on your own, or don’t even bike very much, I think everyone here can agree that more people, on bikes out in nature is a good thing.
And just take a second to look around. Look at this amazing community of people. This has been 9 years in the making. And whether you’ve been around OOFD for a while or this is your first event, I am thinking you can just feel that welcoming and adventurous spirit in this room.
And this community does big things! Last year alone, we led 23 bike camping trips which got 557 folks out bike camping. Plus another nearly 300 riders out on our Adaptive Day Rides, Adult Day Rides, Youth Rides, and Where the Wild Things Grow rides. That’s 42 different bike adventures and nearly 850 participants, from 7 years olds to 70 year olds, folks with fancy racing bikes or old Raleighs, non-verbal youth in wheelchairs, new parents, grandparents, 20 year olds that are just getting into biking. The list goes on and on. That’s just in 2024.
And these folks, our participants, are why we do what we do. They are our neighbors that are looking for a community of adventurers. 34% of the folks that bike camped with us last year were bike camping for their first time. That’s like 180 folks that showed up to do something new and trusted the OOFD volunteers to guide them into the unknown.
And on top of those 850 participants last year, add on the over 230 volunteers slots that our guides filled to lead those rides, we were pushing over 1000 folks out on our rides in one year!
Nearly all of those adventures were dreamt up, planned, and executed by OOFD volunteers. If you are or have been a volunteer with OOFD, raise your hand. Look around. This is what a community of people that believe in something and want to give their time to share it with others looks like. Take note of these folks (you can put your hands down). And if you haven’t talked to them yet, go up to them after my spiel and ask them, why? Why is it that they give so much of themselves, of their time, to OOFD.
I know for me, it’s so many reasons. Not many things bring me more bliss than riding my bike. Get me round a campfire with awesome people and some beers after that bike ride, I’m damn near nirvana. And at the base of all of that, for me, is the community.
I remember as a young adult, growing up on the far southwest side of Chicago, I was always trying to drag my childhood friends out camping or on big adventures. And, it was like pulling teeth. If I did get them out camping, that basically just meant an outdoor Miller Lite drinking session, playing endless games of bean bags, and sleeping in tents at some country campground. Nothing wrong with that. But I didn’t have the gang of folks that automatically were up for a wild adventure, something challenging and into the unknown. Now, I have so many fun, nature loving people in my life that I have to reign myself in so I’m not off adventuring away every weekend of the year.
And so many of these rides happen in partnership with other nature and bike loving organizations. Some of those partners are here right now. And in the spirit of community building, I am going to shout out the partners that I believe are here. Please raise your hand, and feel free to shout out too, when I call out your org, and everyone else, be on the lookout. Because this event is about OOFD but it also is about bringing people together, helping make connections. Plus, it's a little bit of a flex to say, look at how cool we are with all of these awesome friends that came to our party. Ok.
- Wheel and sprocket
- Vern and Sonny’s
- SRAM
- KEEN Chicago
- Forest Preserves of Cook County
- Working Bikes
- The Recyclery
- Latino Outdoors
- Cog Cycles and Yarn
- Blackstone Bikes
- Pedal to the People
- BFF Bikes
- Roscoe Village Bikes
- Mack's Bike and Goods
- Green Corps
- Patagonia
- Chicago Park District
- Cosmic Bikes
What bike shops or organizations did I miss? Feel free to shout it out. And there’s so many other orgs that are in our ecosystem that couldn’t be here tonight. Same thing. When I’m done spieling, go talk to those folks. These are people you want to know, that maybe you want to do cool stuff with.
They are the folks that build us up. That believe in us. That support us. And that reach out when they need our support. And wrapt up into how we think about partners is our broader web of support. It's the family members that give our guides a kiss goodbye on a Friday morning, knowing they won’t be back til Sunday evening. It's the friends that we bring out to the rides. It's the small businesses that donate raffle prizes and the big orgs that offer grants. It's the person that believes in us and our mission and donates to the cause. It's you, the people that come out to the Hootenanny.
As you heard at the top, damn have we been growing. Just from 2023 to 2024, we had a 56% growth in ridership and 68% growth in volunteers. That is wild. And honestly, that was part of our current five year plan. To grow the heck out of our programs, steward volunteers, and increase the accessibility of our rides. And we are going to continue that growth this year, and just blow it out. Really get tons of folks out on our rides.
And then our next 5 years are going to be all about reciprocity. About giving back. To all of these folks. From our participants, to our volunteers, to our partners. And to nature. Slowing down our growth and really making sure what we are doing is done with excellence and with a laser focus and alignment with our mission and our values.
As one of my hero’s, Robin Wall Kimmerer said in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, ‘“The more something is given, the more its value increases.” You give to us, we will put it right back into the cycle of reciprocity. Giving it back to our volunteers, our participants, our partners, and most importantly, to nature. To our community.
And this is our Hootenanny fundraiser, so right now it's my honor to invite you to contribute to this cycle of reciprocity and community building by donating.
Before I start officially asking, I have to preface by saying that we already appreciate the heck out of you all. So many of the people in this room do so much for OOFD already. Whether you are a volunteer program director, board member, or you simply show up, for rides, monthly hangs, the Hootenanny Fundraiser! Everything you do is seen and deeply appreciated. And it is enough.
And for those that never have taken part in this Hootenanny tradition, the way it works. First, my knees are going to start knocking together, I’ll start sweating and get a little shakey voiced. Then, I’ll ask if anyone is willing to raise their hand to donate $1000 dollars. If someone raises their hand, I might fall over with gratitude. Then, I’ll point those folks over to Breanna who will take your donation and write down your info. Then I’ll ask anyone to raise their hand for $750, same deal. I almost collapse, and those that raised their hands head over to Claire there, and she will take care of all the $750 donors as well as the $500 donors. And then $250 (y’all can head over to Daniel), then $100 (y’all can head to Allison).
Ok. So here we go.
(We brought in over $3000 in this portion of the event!)
Shaking my soul here! Goodness gracious. Thank you all so so much. Your generosity is going to launch us into our 10th season with so much positive momentum.
And if none of these giving levels felt good for you, or you just don’t like raising your hand, it's all good. You can still donate. You can simply scan one of these codes. Or you can go over to one of the folks with the clip boards and donate so we can note it down and be sure to get your info so we can shower you with gratitude.
Thank you for listening to all of that. I get so pumped to talk about OOFD, and it's hard to reign it in. I appreciate your attention. And to close, let’s raise our glasses to an excellent year of bike adventures ahead in community with so many of you lovely folks. Cheers and let’s keep the party rolling!
Closing — Serena Larkin
Hi everyone.
Thank you SO MUCH to Midwest Coast Brewing for hosting us and just making us feel so welcome and supported in putting on our Hootenanny fundraiser here this year. Thank you.
I’m Serena, a volunteer with Out Our Front Door, and it’s exactly that feeling of welcome I want to take a moment to appreciate. It’s first in OOFD’s list of core values: welcome, adventure, volunteer, and educate. And I hope everyone here has felt welcome tonight. Whether you’re a big-time sponsor of the evening and you know us well—thank you again!—or you’re totally new to us, like a friend invited you along and you thought ‘why not?’—we’re so glad you’re here.
I myself connected with OOFD just a few years ago. I had moved back to Chicago after about a decade away, and I was eager to make friends, connect with the bike community here after a couple of solo tours out west. Someone told me about Out Our Front Door, so I emailed Glenn. It was kind of the end of season, so there weren’t many rides left for me to join, let alone volunteer on as a guide, but Glenn was like “You should come to the volunteer appreciation party.” And I was like, “But I haven’t... volunteered.” And he was like, “Yeahhh... but you will volunteer.” That’s Glenn. And that’s OOFD.
And he was right. I went to that party, and I volunteered the following year, but I remember feeling from everyone there that night exactly the welcome and warmth that is typical of everyone involved with OOFD, that you feel on every ride, that is in this room tonight, thanks to all of you.
At a time when our world is... extra horrifying, and when too many of our leaders and institutions are not extending that ‘welcome’ that we know everyone deserves, spaces like this, communities like this are more important than ever. OOFD’s radically inclusive welcome is not just something delightful to stumble on as someone who loves to go on bike adventures with other people; it’s also powerful and transformative and necessary... and i would argue it’s just more FUN. So we’re winning, and you’re part of it. Thank you.
This event, and so many of our programs throughout the year, wouldn’t be possible without our sponsors. I wanna shout out some of the big ones before sharing details about the after partyyyy:
- Wheel and Sprocket, wow, who donated a bike, the Chequamegon trip—they’ve got 3 Chicagoland locations and a bunch up in Wisconsin, so go treat yourself to some new gear for the season
- SRAM, which makes fantastic bike parts for all kinds of riding adventures
- Vern + Sonny’s, which provides not just great bike service but also ski service, so double the adventure there
- Ride Illinois, Cosmic Bikes, and Lendimi African Safari, thank you!
- Casa del Pueblo, thank you for the delicious food; they’re down on Blue Island and 18th when you need to feed your next party.
- Wild Scallions, thank you for the music all night! Can we give them a round of applause?
At this point, Board Prez and Adult Program Director Breanna Bertacchi came up and thanked Ashley Lyons for leading the Hootenanny team and gave her some flowers.)
Finally, for those who aren’t ready to call it a night, there IS an after-party! You can join us at Damen Tavern, less than a mile away. We’ll be rolling over there within the hour, and we’d love to see you.
Thank you so much for coming out tonight and supporting these bike adventures for everyone, supporting this community. We’ll see you on a ride...
Ok. We always really put a lot of thought into those spiels at the Hootenanny and while we had an audience of about 200, its nice to share out the message to our broader audience here on our website.
