Bike donations more complex than they seem "It is overwhelming sometimes," said Dixie Duncan, Winston's mom, a single parent and tax accountant from south Arlington who runs the nonprofit effort. We have a lot of adults who have been doing this with us, and that gives me hope. It's still very, very difficult. After collecting the bikes, Wheels to Africa is dependent on other nonprofits, preferably operating in Africa, to cover the considerable costs associated with shipping, import duties and inland transportation, often through multiple countries. "Getting the bikes is the easy part," said Richard Hubbell, a former Foreign Service official who is volunteering this year to oversee the delivery of the bikes from two African ports to the village of Mayom in South Sudan. It's a lot more complicated than people think - it's not like shipping to anywhere else in the world. Wheels to Africa is such a small nonprofit that it is not even required to file full financial statements with the Internal Revenue Service. Its board chairman calls it a "shoestring nonprofit," relying on volunteer part-time labor to organize the annual collection, disassemble and pack the bikes in containers, and store the cargo until it's ready to ship. Several former partners, reluctant to criticize a charity with such noble intentions, question whether the job is too big for what is essentially a handful of volunteers. The bikes donated to Wheels to Africa can end up costing other groups time and money. "They have offered us bicycles because we work in Uganda, where there is a great need for bicycles," said John Wanda, founder of the Arlington Academy of Hope. We would have to work together to organize the shipping, particularly that last-mile shipping from the docks to the community. We are not yet in a position to pay for it. Dixie Duncan concedes that some of the bikes her organization has collected have never made it to Africa because of broken promises from some partners. But the bikes collected, she said, have gone to people in need. "We sent some to Haiti, some to Kenya and some to Fairfax County, where a woman I know refurbishes them and gives them to needy kids in Alexandria," she said. Others ended up going to Honduras. Hundreds and hundreds more, she said, have made their way to Africa, where they have been used by people who sorely need basic transportation to school, stores, work and medical clinics. "The biggest challenge is working with different organizations," she said. "We've always tried to partner with someone" who could deliver the bikes because she does not have the money to accompany the shipment herself.