They got their motors running — and helped good causes

Tom Temin Commentary

They got their motors running — and helped good causes

Nineteen riders from the federal information technology community joined in Federal News Network's 3rd Annual Motorcycle Ride for Charity on Friday, May 20.

Tom Temin@tteminWFED

May 24, 2022 8:51 am

2 min read

With 19 contributors/riders and nearly 15 sponsors, the charity event raised more than $21,000.

It doesn’t take much to get motorcycle enthusiasts to hop onto their steeds for a jaunt of a few miles or a few hours. When a ride is coupled with helping some great causes, you can convince federal employees and contractors to take off half a weekday.

Thus it was that 19 riders from the federal information technology community joined in Federal News Network’s 3rd Annual Motorcycle Ride for Charity. From contributions of the individual riders and from this year’s corporate sponsors, we raised enough to give $7,000 checks to three charities:

Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, which provides emergency loans and grants to federal employees in distress, as well as scholarships to children of federal employees
Friends of Patients of the NIH, which supports families of those in clinical trials with housing and transportation; and
U.S. War Dogs Association, which rescues and rehabilitates combat canines and, in many cases, reunites them with their former military handlers.

FEEA’s Robyn Kehoe, Friends’ Heidi Williams, and the War Dogs’ Chris Willingham joined us at the finish of the ride at Daingerfield Island in Alexandria, Virginia, to receive the checks and mingle with the riders over box lunches.

Riders gathered Friday morning at District Harley-Davidson/BMW/Ducati. We departed at 10 a.m. for a 60-plus mile route on a series of beautiful back roads of Montgomery County, Maryland. The final parts of the route took us across the Chain Bridge into Virginia and the George Washington Parkway.

For the first time this year, we had corporate sponsors from the federal contracting and services industries. They were:

Touring Bike Presenting Sponsor: Carahsoft
Cruiser: DLT, A Tech Data Company; WAEPA; Steve Charles Ventures
Sport Bike: TriCorp Inc.; Andrew Schreiner Marketing; archTIS; Google
Sidecar: Fairfax Radiology Centers

Special thanks goes to the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) for lunch, Stephen Charles for ride support, and the staff of Federal News Network for marketing, publicity, and logistics support.