It’s been just over a year since we really got going with The Trail Pot, and it’s fair to say that progress on its growth hasn’t been quite as good as we’d hoped it would be.
We get amazing comments from people about the charity, the model and the plan – but that doesn’t seem to translate into donations or encouragement to businesses to support the charity. Which is a shame.
We do have a number of regular donors though – and their ongoing support is the constant life-support a start up charity like this needs and more importantly, it’s the encouragement we need to keep going.
None of this is a surprise though.
Everything told us that setting up a charity would be hard. That the first year to 18 months would be hard. That the money would be slow to come in. Talking to other charity founders we hear the same thing again and again – “hard graft”,”burnout”,”grind”.
The onus is on us to make this work – but we know it will. These first year hurdles – HMRC, Charity Commission, proving ourselves – are hard things to do. Compliance with all the ‘hard stuff’ starts immediately. But we know that when we get going, it will grow.
Add into that launching the charity in a cost of living crisis, when the bike industry is on its uppers following the historic highs of just a few short years ago, and we’ve really got our work cut out for us.
The hardest thing is squaring off the energy we have for the vision of The Trail Pot with the reality of delivering and running a charity. That energy and belief remains undimmed though.
Good doesn’t come easy. We’re putting this graft in. We’re going to keep on going and build this amazing thing. And now is the time to do it, because when the bike industry comes back, wouldn’t it be great for all those projects screaming out for support to have made it over the line and be ready for riders?
The charity will evolve – we’d love you to help it grow.
Donate now. Make a difference to the future of mountain biking
Chris, December ’25
The Trail Pot 