Vivo Productions (Cross Crusade) makes generous donation, appeal for support from OBRA members

Last week, we heard some exciting rumors that Vivo Productions Inc. - organizer of the popular Cross Crusade Cyclocross Series - was planning to make a substantial donation to Northwest Trail Alliance.  Today, Cross Crusade Executive Director Brad Ross sent the following message to the mailing list of the Oregon Bike Race Association, confirming the donation and providing some background on the motivation behind the donation:

To my fellow OBRA racers,

Last year, Vivo Productions Inc. - the company that puts on the Cross Crusade Series - joined 1% for the Planet, a growing global alliance of businesses that donate 1% of their annual revenues to a network of close to 2,000 environmental organizations worldwide.

I am pleased to announce that as part of our pledge to this cause, Vivo Productions recently decided to donate $1,100 to local offroad cycling advocacy group Northwest Trail Alliance (www.nw-trail.org). Last year, the group - formerly known as Portland United Mountain Pedalers - rebranded itself, added a new slate of longtime bike advocates to its board of directors (incuding our very own Erik Tonkin), and started advocating for more local off-road cycling opportunities with renewed energy. Northwest Trail Alliance's fresh approach - combined with the personal efforts of my good friend Frank Selker - has resulted in the formation of a new advisory committee focused on increasing singletrack acces in Forest Park, among other things. At this very moment, the group is actively working to preserve
bike access to trails around Powell Butte, helping develop a new riding area at Gateway Green, and advocating for the creation of pump tracks in city parks across Portland. And all across NW Oregon and SW Washington, their small army of unsung trail stewards and volunteers has been maintaining and building sweet singletrack trails that I - and probably many of you - have enjoyed riding.

So we thought it was time to give back. And we'd like to use the occasion to ask all of you, who enjoy riding or racing on dirt, to step up your support for Northwest Trail Alliance, by becoming a member or by supporting the organization in other ways. There is strength in numbers and all of us have much to gain from a strong,
local advocacy group, working hard to "create, protect and enhance offroad cycling opportunities" in our local parks and in the beautiful open spaces across our region. Northwest Trail Alliance needs your support and we think they deserve it.

Thanks,

Brad Ross
Executive Director
Cross Crusade Cyclocross Series

In a first reaction, Tom Archer - President of the Board of Directors of Northwest Trail Alliance - expressed his deepest gratitude. According to Archer, "we are all honored and very happy to receive such generous donation, and extremely appreciative of Brad's personal endorsement of the direction that we are currently pursuing in our advocacy efforts, as well as the heartfelt recognition of our relentless trail stewards."

Archer adds: "the folks who are working the trails year-round are the real heroes of our organization, but we need to provide them with more resources and volunteers to help them with their trail care efforts. The Board of Directors just decided to pursue an all-new "Trail Development Partnership Program", which we hope will become a game-changer for us and for the land managers/agencies we partner with in our region. However, the program is pretty ambitious and we'll need the full support of the offroad cycling community and our local business supporters to pull it all of. It's great to see Brad and the people behind the Cross Crusade Series stepping up big time and taking the lead at providing us that level of support."