Dear ride organizer,

For more than 20 years, Ride Illinois has collected and distributed information about upcoming invitational rides and bike-themed events as an easy and affordable way for clubs and community organizations to promote their rides. We are reaching out today to ask if your club or organization wants to use our service in 2024. For 2024, we will again have a digital Ride Guide -- a lower-cost method to reach more than 20,000 invitational riders plus bike shop customers.

Since 2019, we have published a Ride Guide "keeper" magazine, with each ride having a 5.5” X 8.5” ad. Our digital Ride Guide was extremely well received by all who downloaded it for the past two years!

You can view our 2023 Ride Guide here. The 2023 Ride Guide has had 20,975 views -- nearly tripled from the 2022 Ride Guide!

For 2024, our Ride Guide will be in a digital format to keep costs down for clubs and reduce publishing and distribution costs. Ride Illinois will mail postcards to more than 10,000 households and rack cards to approximately 200 bike shops across the state. Both the postcards and rack cards will direct people to the digital Ride Guide.

Ride Illinois invites you to promote your ride with a 5.5” X 8.5” page in our 2024 Ride Guide which will be distributed via email and social media in March. Since it will be a digital format, we will include links for both your ride’s website as well as a registration link!  

The fee to purchase an ad in the 2024 Ride Guide will be $260 for Ride Illinois affiliated bike clubs and $520 for other organizations conducting a ride or event ($625 for those organizations that do not provide a rider list).

Participating clubs will email their ad as a PDF (with fonts outlined) or JPG. All associated images must be at least 200 dpi. The layout will be the same as the previous two years' Ride Guides. You can view the template here.

Each 5.5" x 8.5" page of our magazine has only one ad! Most ride organizers provide their own ads; however, if you do not make your own ad, we can recommend a graphic designer that can produce one for you for an additional fee.

designer that can produce one for you for an additional fee.

The $260 rate is for affiliated bike clubs that have made a donation to Ride Illinois within the past year. To learn more about supporting our advocacy work and the benefits of club affiliation, please visit our website. Thank you for supporting our work to make Illinois better through biking!

Ride Illinois affiliated bike clubs also receive additional support in promoting their invitational rides by having:

• Their ride listed our website event calendar
• Their ride promoted on our social media which has over 12,000 followers
• Their ride listed in our monthly newsletter which is sent to more than 6,500 individuals

If you are interested in purchasing an ad in our 2024 Ride Guide, please contact Ride Illinois Communications and Projects Coordinator Gina Kenny as soon as possible at gina@rideillinois.org or (708) 334-2244.

When: The Ride Guide will be available in the beginning of March. The earlier deadline will allow potential riders to plan their season's rides sooner.

Participant List: Clubs/Organizations must provide a list of previous event participants in an Excel spreadsheet to Ride Illinois with separate columns for first name, last name, main address, additional address info (such as apartment or unit number), city, state, and zip. Please send a separate file of your members so that they receive the ride magazine, too. (Please note that it greatly helps our deduplication process if the first and last names are in separate fields. Also, we only want rider lists for the past one to two years, not earlier.)

Geographic Distribution: This depends on the participant lists received from the clubs. Ride Illinois invites all Illinois bike clubs to purchase an ad in the Ride Guide and welcomes the opportunity to promote organized rides throughout the state.

Participation Fee:

$260 for current Ride Illinois-affiliated bike clubs per ad, and $520 for other organizations providing a list ($625 if no list is provided)

Bike clubs must be current in their affiliation, meaning they have made a donation to Ride Illinois within the past year. If you are unsure of your status, please contact us at gina@rideillinois.org.

Our fee covers printing of postcards and rack cards, postage, and other associated costs. It does not include the production of your ride's ad.

Deadlines for 2024 Ride Guide

2/12/2024: Commitment to Ride Illinois on your participation

2/19/2024: Participant list (if applicable) submitted to Ride Illinois

2/26/2024: Ad submitted to Ride Illinois

3/4/2024: Payment for ad must be received

Contact Gina at gina@rideillinois.org with any questions about ads in our 2024 Ride Guide. Thanks!