The concept of privateer support isn’t new, but the Dirt Fund Project team are going into 2022 swinging with their plans to support more riders.
Read the statement from Daniel O’Shea, one of the crack team behind the Dirt Fund Project about where they are and what their plans are for the year ahead.
Dear Mountain Bike Community,
So, today is September 24th, just a week away from the final EWS of the 2021 season, and the final World Cup Downhill has already taken place in Snowshoe. What a final race that was.
It was 9 months ago when we had this crazy idea to start The Dirt Fund Project and try our best to do a little to support UK and Irish Privateer Enduro World Series and World Cup Downhill racers. We had no idea how we would do it, where to start, or what to do. All we did know is that cash could help these privateers and we needed to figure out how to get this to them.
We settled on the £1000 cash as a meaningful amount. Is it enough? No where near it. Will it help a little? For sure it will. Is it meaningful? We like to think it is, and the feedback is that it helps. From the outset we wanted to be clear that this is not a business, it’s a project, it’s a community, it’s a collection of Mountain Bikers who love watching racing and helping those who race, a real home grown effort.
To that end I wanted to write this letter to explain what’s happened to the money we have raised and where we are now as we move into year 2 of the project.
Payout 1
We achieved this by putting our hands in our own pockets as the founders and with a final push of help from Lance Gauld we were able to make the first £1000 cash payout to Calum Mcbain.
The next 4 payouts we utilised Justgiving as a way for you the MTB Community to donate and buy raffle tickets for some sick prizes donated by sick companies.
To that end we accumulated £4121, paid £168 in fees and ended up with £3953. We made up the difference and managed to pay out to 4 more sensational privateers; Fergus Ryan, Harry Byrne, Jessie-May Morgan and
Niall Clerkin.
During this time we also launched our new website, added donate buttons, and also started selling some merchandise. The role of the merchandise was clear from the start, we wanted to use the cash generated to cover the costs of hosting the website and domain names.
From the donate buttons we have gathered £402 (after PayPal, Credit Card, Shopify fees), which goes straight into the payout pot. From the merchandise we have gathered £1069 (after PayPal, Credit Card,
Shopify fees). So what happens this 1069? Well, this is great news. Year one hosting and domain name fees were £462. So that leaves us with £607 left over.
We estimate next years fees to be less at 330, so with year two’s cost taken care of, we still have 277 left over, and what do we do with that? We put it straight into the payout pot.
Besides the Justgiving page and donate buttons on our new website, we also ran a Raffall for Ard Rock tickets and raised £146 after fees. We ran an in person raffle at the Ard Rock Enduro itself and raised £1025. And while all this was going on the super dudes at Mudhugger designed us some limited edition huggers
which sold out and we raised another £700+.
One thing that didn’t cost us a single penny. The unreal work by Dan Cox from PixelHeadz content creation for all our media work. Big up to that man, and to the 8 other volunteers that run this show for the love of the sport. Cheers dudes & dudettes.
End results are 5 privateers helped in Year 1, Year 1 hosting and domain name costs covered from merchandise sales, Year 2 hosting and domain name costs covered, and we are just £300 short of being able to support 3 privateers to kick off Year 2 of The Dirt Fund Project.
Thank you all. Together we are making a difference. Stoked to say the least.
Daniel
