Bing Lends it's Voice to Highlight the Great Work of Bristol-Based Cycling Charity

As part of its Help Your Britain campaign, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.com, is today handing over its daily homepage to Life Cycle UK, enabling the cause to tell its story to Bing’s 13 million users. To mark the occasion, Bing is running an exclusive image that celebrates Life Cycle UK’s work, as well as providing in-depth information about the charity and the work it does.

Life Cycle UK is a Bristol-based organisation that aims to inspire people and equip them with the skills, the knowledge and the confidence to make cycling part of their everyday lives. Its projects take cycling and bike-related activities to many diverse groups within the community – from the young to the over 55s, those suffering from mental illness, the visually impaired and inmates at Bristol prison.

Poppy Brett, Director of, Life Cycle UK says: “These are exciting times at Life Cycle UK, as we look forward to another year of working to transform peoples’ lives through cycling. We are a committed, determined and passionate bunch – made up of a few paid staff, some very skilled freelance cycle instructors and mechanics, not to mention over 40 committed volunteers. We’re really looking forward to making our projects bigger and better in 2012. However, as many small charities are finding at the moment, things are tough out there and we face a constant battle to raise the funds to keep our work going. Our projects don’t cost much to run and a small donation really can make a big difference. We’re thrilled to be involved in Bing’s Help Your Britain campaign and look forward to sharing more information about the work we do with Bing’s users.”

Life Cycle UK’s curation of the Bing homepage continues Bing’s Help Your Britain campaign, which launched this week. There are more than 187,000 registered charities across Great Britain with a story to be told, many of which will never be heard due to the lack of resources at their disposal. Bing is shining the spotlight on these unsung British heroes as part of a long-term campaign, enabling the British public to nominate the charities they would like to see featured on the homepage on the final Friday of each month via www.bing.com/HelpYourBritain.

Along with Life Cycle UK, charities including Magic Breakfast, Lifelites, All Dogs Matter and User Voice have also featured on the Bing homepage during the course of the week. Hot spots provide users with additional information about the challenges each charity seeks to tackle through their work. Users can also watch in-depth videos with the founders and staff of each organisation and find out more information about each cause, including details of how they can make a donation to the featured charities, by visiting Bing’s Help Your Britain page.

Peter Maxmin from Bing says: “Cycling has an amazing ability to have a positive impact on people’s mindsets and bring individuals together as a group. Life Cycle UK is an excellent example of the great work that smaller charities are doing to make Britain even greater.  Whilst these organisations do an outstanding job, they don’t always have the resources to raise awareness and therefore the funds necessary to keep doing such valuable work.

“Indeed, the latest Charity Forecast Survey unveiled by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations found that almost two thirds (65 per cent) of charity leaders expect their financial situation to get even worse in 2012. The Bing Help Your Britain campaign aims to give these organisations a helping hand in difficult times and we look forward to receiving nominations from the British public for the additional causes they would like to bring to the attention of our 13 million users.”