SHI organized a charity bike build in Warren, New Jersey on August 4, 2026, drawing 300 employees to Forest Lodge NJ for an afternoon of team competition and community giving. Teams competed through Build-A-Bike® challenges and donated the assembled bikes to the Greater Somerset County YMCA. Participants came from Texas and New Jersey,a cross-regional group that rarely gets to work in the same room.
SHI is one of the world’s largest private IT solutions providers. The company serves businesses and institutions globally through hardware, software, cloud solutions, and managed services. Their Somerset County operations made the YMCA a natural choice. The charity serves the same community where SHI’s New Jersey team works every day.
What Running a Charity Bike Build for Three Hundred People in New Jersey Looks Like
Scale changes what a team event feels like. At 300 people, the energy runs louder, the competition runs harder, and the outcome feels bigger. Build-A-Bike® is designed to work at that scale. The format divides the group into smaller competing teams. Each team focuses on earning components through timed challenges before the build begins. That structure prevents the event from becoming passive. Every participant has a team to compete for. Every team has a reason to push through each challenge. The format holds attention because the outcome is visible: finished bikes going to a real organization.
The facility accommodated the full group across both the challenge stations and the assembly floor. Challenge rounds ran with real pressure, teams that performed better earned more materials to work with in the build. By the time assembly started, every team had momentum heading into the finish.
The participant mix strengthened the event. SHI brought employees from Texas and New Jersey. They work together regularly but rarely see each other in person. Shared competition in a shared room builds the kind of familiarity that video calls don’t produce. It is the difference between knowing someone’s name and knowing how they work under pressure. One afternoon at scale can change both.
Megeen Dolan Laska from the Greater Somerset County YMCA accepted the bike donation at the end of the event. She earned a perfect 5 out of 5 rating from the SHI team. The YMCA runs youth development programs, fitness resources, and community services throughout Warren and Somerset County. The bikes go into the communities where those programs are already at work.
Thank you to SHI for building a team event that gave back to the local community.
Planning a large-group charity bike build in New Jersey or the New York metro area? Build-A-Bike® works at any scale. Every bike ends up with a local child who needs it.