Free Ride Bicycle Project
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 271805554
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2025–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2024
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA, USA
- Rating
- 53
- Verdict
- MIXED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Adult, Continuing Education
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $62,970
- Expenses
- $35,465
- Assets
- $157,605
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
3 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Athena Czerwinski (President)
People named in this filing
- David Russell (Secretary)
- Peter Burch (Treasurer)
- Athena Czerwinski (President)
Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
The mission of Free Ride Bicycle Project is to enable people of all ages in the Pittsburgh region to obtain recycle and maintain bicycles for free or low cost. Free Ride aims to enhance the health of our community and environment by promoting bicycle transportation. We carry out this mission through earn-a-bike programs open shops free bicycles for kids and conducting outreach in the community.
What it reported doing in 2025
Volunteer Night: During volunteer nights community members and volunteer staff work together to refurbish donated bicycles for sale and donation and maintain the shop space to keep things clean and organized. In addition Volunteer Night serves as an education program where volunteer staff and council members educate community members about how to repair bikes and volunteers learn repair skills through doing. Our activities during this program are deliberately designed to educate our volunteers about bicycles and bicycle maintenance. We welcome people of all experience levels to attempt mechanical repairs in a supportive environment while contributing to the mission of the organization. In 2025 we repaired ~680 bikes received ~2,550 hours of volunteer support where volunteers fix bikes learn from staff members how to repair bikes and help maintain the shop and donated over ~800 bicycles to partner organizations that also repair and refurbish bikes.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Other-operating. 67% of the money available for current operations came from other operating revenue.
- Distribution model
- Direct operator. The filing allocates 88% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.
The verdict
MIXED - The filed numbers largely add up and revenue comfortably covers expenses. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and a relatively small share of total spending goes to programs.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 34
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 72
- Growth: NotEnoughData
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 26%; rating input score 26
- Program expense ratio: 46.1%; rating input score 46
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 43.7%; rating input score 87; 87th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 4.44; rating input score 82; 82nd percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: Limited
- Revenue growth: Limited
- Asset growth: Limited
Details
- Where the money goes: 26% of revenue deployed · 46.1% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 3 filed program accomplishments · $16K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 3 people listed
- Consistency: 8 of 8 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 26/100.
- Moderate — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 46/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.