Thanks to everyone who got involved in the CamelBak People’s Choice Round with sharing and voting. We have had an outstanding response and a load of engagement from people around New Zealand who wanted to get behind these three very cool projects from the wider community, not just mountain bikers. That has been great for these three projects to get more visibility in their local communities for what they are trying to achieve.
Unfortunately overnight we also had an influx of ‘support’ from what appear to be spammers based off-shore that has skewed the voting towards one of the projects. The project affected contacted us saying that it didn’t reflect their community and that they were concerned how it might look. There is no doubt in our mind that everyone was playing with a straight bat and that it was just one of those things. We (Trail Fund NZ) have not had an issue with Facebook spam in the past but in hindsight we should have anticipated this as a potential issue but we didn’t. Live and learn.
So what to do? We’ve decided to stop voting now, to increase the pool of money to $6000 and split it three ways so that each project gets some funding. So a huge congratulations to the Te Miro Mountain Bike Club, Kapiti Mountain Bike Club and Bike Methven who will be awarded $2000 each in support of their respective projects.
In terms of process, I have talked to all three projects involved, all of whom did an outstanding job of ‘getting out the vote’. Each project has already been through our Advisory Board process in order to get to the final three and met our criteria of course. Everyone spoken to is in agreement that it is the right thing to do and that has been ratified by our Committee in a vote. They are all stoked to be getting $2000 towards their particular project.
We at Trail Fund NZ are also excited to be able to support all three projects because in each case they are able to move their projects forward with the $2000. And the next time we do an online vote we make sure there is a more robust way to keep things level!
Thanks again to everyone out there who got involved, helped get the word out in each community and of course a huge thanks to CamelBak NZ for their support and to all all our generous sponsors and individuals who provide the funding that makes our support of these projects possible! You all rock.
