Welcome to the Five Boro Bike Tour’s
Team Clearwater 2010!

IMPORTANT:  If you have not registered with Team Clearwater or with Bike NY before getting to this page, please do so now.  Unless you have filled out our Team Clearwater registration form and been contacted by someone in our office or have registered through Bike NY, YOU ARE NOT ON THE ROSTER AND NOT REGISTERED FOR THE RIDE. To register with Team Clearwater, click here.

Thank you for your efforts and for bringing Clearwater’s message to your friends, family and community! Remember: if you know someone that isn’t able to join Team Clearwater for the Five Boro Bike Tour this year, let them know they can still support Clearwater’s mission by donating  to your efforts or by creating their own fundraising pages via the options listed below!

And for those of you who registered through Bike NY as a general rider, but still want to be a Team Clearwater member… we welcome you to the event.  Please note that as a general rider you are free to raise as much or as little as you can, but we cannot guarantee you a spot at the front of the line with the rest of the charity entries.  However, those who raise more than $200 by April 2, will get the Team Clearwater jersey for the ride and will be spreading the word throughout the crowd. Just follow the instructions below and please send an email with your name, phone number and t-shirt size to bike@clearwater.org, so we can put you on the auxiliary roster and keep track of your progress.  If you are confident about achieving the $200 goal, we also encourage you to send us a large self-addressed stamped padded envelope, so that we may get your jersey to you as quickly as possible and prevent tour day mishaps.

Now we can help you get started with your fundraising.

The most important thing to remember is that as a 501(c)3 non-profit, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc. is required by the IRS to write a letter of acknowledgement for every donation, so please follow these instructions carefully.

The first step, of course,  is to spread the word!  Simply send an email around to your friends and family telling them about your participation in the Five Boro Bike Tour on Team Clearwater.  Here are some points you may want to highlight:

• Our team will be riding 42 miles through New York’s five boros, traffic-free, as a part of Bike New York’s TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour. We will be joining 30,000 cyclists for the largest recreational cycling event in America.
• All proceeds from this event go to support the historic Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and her critically-acclaimed environmental education programs.
• The 108-foot tall sloop serves as a floating classroom to give over 15,000 students each year a hands-on experience with the science, history and culture of the Hudson River. For more information, please visit www.clearwater.org
• You can use the per mile breakdown below for ideas, but we welcome any amount you can give.

Once they’ve decided to support you, there are a couple of ways to go about securing their donation:

1) Download this form and attach in an email to your supporters.   They can pay by credit card or check, but MUST FILL OUT THE FORM in both cases. Checks must be made payable to Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. Then they can either print and mail, print and fax or email the form and payment into our office (see below address). Or they can send the form and donation back to you and you may send all your sponsor forms (and accompanying payments) in at once.

Send to: bike@clearwater.org
or
HRS Clearwater Inc.
724 Wolcott Ave.
Beacon, NY 12508
Attn: Ann
Fax: 845-831-2821

Bear in mind: whether they send in their payment and form or you do, at least $500 must be in to us by April 16th, 2010, or your credit card will be charged for the amount of shortfall.  Be sure and remind them that it is important to fill out the form accurately.

2) There are a number of online services which allow you to set up a secure page where your friends and family can donate using their credit card while completing the appropriate information we need.

Firstgiving – http://www.firstgiving.com

• Choose “make your page” and designate Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. as your non-profit of choice.
• Choose “Sporting” as your chosen event and then choose “Cycling” from the drop down box.
• Go through the secure set up system and enter in the requested information. It will ask you to identify your event and the date– if the Bike Tour doesn’t come up, don’t worry! Keep going through the simple steps and edit your page details, once firstgiving.com allows you to do so. You can spice up your page as much (or as little) as you’d like!
• Send the link that firstgiving.com emails to you out to your family, friends, coworkers, etc. Post the available widget on your social networking sites (facebook.com, myspace.com, etc.) and on your blogs to get the word out– the more people that know, the more money you raise!
• Your family, friends and co-workers can also go to www.firstgiving.com and search your name, thereby bringing up your page. Then they can donate!

Again, let family, friends and co-workers know that even if they can’t join us riding that day, they can still be  a part of the action by creating a page for themselves, as listed above, and by spreading the word to everyone they know. The more support Team Clearwater gets, the more success our mission will see!