Building the Next Chapter

Dear Adventure Cycling Members,

As we celebrate the midpoint of our jubilee year, I want to reflect on the health of ACA, what your Board has been working on, and where we are headed together.

Improved Financial Performance

We are proud to report that ACA’s financial performance in the first half of the year has exceeded expectations. Membership revenue is ahead of budget. Our spring member drive brought over 500 lapsed members back on board and welcomed over 160 new members into our community. Fundraising has been strong thanks to the generosity of you, our members. Operating expenses remain below budget. Overall, our financial position is significantly stronger than it was at this time last year, and with your continued support, we’ll continue to make forward progress.

Member Engagement and Feedback

We heard members loud and clear: You care deeply about ACA. Whether through emails, conversations, surveys, or forum posts, we hear several consistent themes. You want clear communication about important organizational decisions and meaningful opportunities to contribute ideas and expertise before those decisions are made. You want greater transparency around finances, governance, and strategy. And you want to see effective stewardship of ACA’s mission and resources. Most encouragingly, you overwhelmingly want ACA to succeed.

This year, over 3,400 members participated in our Annual Member Survey. The results reinforced many of the themes we’ve been hearing. Members renew because they believe in ACA’s mission; value our routes, magazine, and advocacy work; and want the organization to serve as the essential resource for bicycle travel and adventure. Members encouraged us to improve transparency, upgrade our digital offerings, and inspire and empower generations of cyclists now and in the future.

I want to acknowledge the resilience, dedication, and professionalism of ACA staff under these challenging times. Under Interim Executive Director Max Caplanides’ leadership, ACA has maintained strong operational performance while cultivating a culture committed to learning and growing. On behalf of the Board, thank you to Max and every member of staff.

Board Priorities and Direction

While we are encouraged by our near-term financial results and the high level of membership engagement, the Board remains focused on the question that is both urgent and perennial: How do we ensure ACA remains financially sustainable, mission-driven, and able to adapt for years to come? This question has motivated much of the Board’s work so far this year. Our actions are also rooted in membership feedback that highlights our need to strengthen governance and cultivate relationships across our community.

One of our most visible steps to strengthen governance was welcoming three new board members — David Read, Linda Tacke, and Bob Stapleton — whose collective experience spans nonprofit leadership, finance, cycling, advocacy, organizational transformation, and business strategy. We welcomed former Save ACA member Cyndi Steiner as an ex officio member to strengthen relationships across the ACA community.

The Board is intensely focused on how ACA can best fulfill its mission over the next fifty years. While the world of bicycle travel has expanded and changed, we believe that ACA’s goal to inspire, empower, and connect people to travel by bicycle is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1976. Building thoughtfully towards our future requires respecting and honoring our past. Productive discussions with ACA’s founders and former leaders over the last several months have us all pulling in the same direction.

To enhance and sustain our relevance, we must also evolve in how we deliver our mission. The Board and staff are analyzing ACA’s programs, finances, member value proposition, technology needs, and business model.

A specific focus is evaluating how ACA develops, distributes, and sustains its route information in today’s technology landscape. As navigation tools and member expectations continue to evolve, we’re examining how to best provide the trusted route information cyclists rely on while ensuring this core part of our mission remains financially sustainable.

50th Anniversary Celebration

This October 23 through 25, we will gather to celebrate ACA’s 50th Anniversary in Missoula, where it all began. This is an opportunity to celebrate our history and look forward to our future. Registration is now open, and we hope you will join us in person.

Looking back over the first half of 2026, I believe we’re beginning to see a new page in ACA’s story taking form. Our responsibility is not simply to tackle today’s challenges, but also to strengthen ACA’s ability to make thoughtful decisions for decades to come. That is the work to which your Board is committed. Thank you for continuing to be part of this journey. Thank you for your continued membership, your thoughtful ideas, and your consistent encouragement.

Flavia Chen
2026 ACA Board Chair

A Note from Our Interim Executive Director

When I stepped into the interim executive director role in March, I made a commitment to be candid with you about where ACA stands. A few months in, here is what I can tell you: We are moving forward together. Staff, Board, founders, past leaders, and members are all contributing to the collective vision of what comes next.

Earlier this year, we spoke candidly about our financial trajectory and the structural adjustments required to ensure organizational longevity. Thanks in large part to the generosity of members like you stepping up to help fund the gap, 2026 is generating real momentum toward reversing our initial projections of a deficit year. Progress can also be attributed to further cost-cutting measures and diligent resource management from staff. We’re working as a lean and highly motivated team to deliver on the mission that we all care deeply about.

The conversation is shifting away from crisis management toward both the tangible progress of our programs and the revitalizing the organization for the road ahead. We are using data from our Annual Member Survey and the candid feedback we’ve received over the past year to refocus on what matters most to you and bring new members into the fold.

Here is some of what that looks like right now:

A Better Front Door to Our Routes

We are investing heavily in making our route network and the wealth of information around it more accessible and digestible. By the end of this summer, we will complete a total overhaul of our website’s routes pages, making it intuitive, approachable, and significantly easier to discover and plan your next tour. That work lands just in time for our second route launch of the year, slated for this fall: a new route in eastern Canada. That comes on the heels of the huge success of the Golden Gravel Trail, which has seen more than12,000 downloads since it launched in March.

A Recommitment to Safety and Advocacy

We have been rebuilding our advocacy program around partnerships with organizations working toward the same long-term vision while making it easier for you to pitch in on the issues that matter most out on the road. This pairs with major recent expansion wins for the U.S. Bicycle Route System, now more than 24,000 miles across 35 states and Washington, D.C., and an upcoming push we’ll lead to designate a recognized route tracing the Mississippi River corridor.

Rethinking Membership for the Next Fifty Years

Behind the scenes, the staff and Board are hard at work on the biggest question in front of us: How membership should deliver value in an era when most riders plan their trips with free information at their fingertips. We want joining Adventure Cycling to be the obvious first step for anyone planning a bike tour, and we want the value of membership to be immediate and unmistakable. This work is central to the sustainable path our leadership team is charting, and you will hear more about it this fall.

Honoring Our Past While Celebrating the Present

If you haven’t yet, check out our newly launched webpage honoring the ride that started it all: Bikecentennial. This comes as thousands are out riding our routes this summer, many as part of our 50th Anniversary Drop-in Rides event and over 300 more on our guided tours. We are also finalizing work to completely digitize every portrait and story in the National Bicycle Touring Portrait Collection with a goal for the full collection to be publicly available to browse online later this year.

None of this happens without you. We are working hard to revitalize the organization with you alongside us. Sincerely, thank you for sticking with us and making it all possible. If Adventure Cycling has meant something to you, and you’re inspired to help us tackle the climb ahead, a donation today is one way to do that. If you can make it work, it makes a real difference.

Fifty years is worth celebrating. But what I keep coming back to is not where we have been. It is where this organization is capable of going, with the right support behind it.

Thank you again, and happy pedaling out there,

Max Caplanides
Interim Executive Director