Guidance for Returning BFU Applicants 

Thank you for your continued participation in the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) Program!

NOTE: The Bicycle Friendly University designation (awarded Bronze or higher) is valid for four years. If your award was designated in 2021, it will be up for renewal in 2025.  BFUs that have made rapid improvements since their previous application are welcome to reapply early, but they are only required to renew once every 4 years to maintain their designation. 

If your last BFU application resulted in an Honorable Mention designation, there are no renewal requirements to maintain the Honorable Mention status. Your campus will be recognized on the League website for one year following the Honorable Mention designation, but the status does not technically expire. Honorable Mention campuses are encouraged to take the time they need to implement improvements recommended in the BFU Feedback Reports before reapplying to the BFU program with the intention to move up to a Bronze or higher award level. 

Renewing BFU applicants from 2016 and later may now copy over their previous submission answers into the current online application form, if desired. Please follow the instructions below to duplicate your 2016 or later submission into the current BFU form online. 

Please note this is a new capability of our online application portal, for 2016 and later returning BFU applicants only. (Returning to the program from a 2015 or earlier submission? Click here!) We welcome your feedback or questions at any time during the renewal process, at bfa@bikeleague.org, to help us improve this guidance or the overall renewal process.

To Copy Your Older BFU Application into the 2024 Online BFU Form:

When you are ready to start working on your renewal application online, please log in under the same username account that submitted the previous application for your campus.  If needed, you can reset the password here, or contact bfa@bikeleague.org to find out what username submitted the previous application or to request a transfer or update to the email address associated with the older account.

Once you are logged in to the correct account, please click the following link to copy over your previous application to the 2025 online BFU form: 

https://bicyclefriendly.secure-platform.com:443/a/solicitations/90/home?createFromLinkedSolicitation=True

From there, please select the specific year your last application was submitted under, from the Program/Round dropdown menu and click ‘Search’ (you can leave the ‘Form Name’ field blank).  Your original BFU submission from that year should then appear.

Click on “Use this Form” next to your older submission name to copy that submission over to the 2024 online application form. 

You may now make edits to your 2024 BFU submission. Please note that any new questions or questions that have changed format since your last application may not carry responses over.  In addition to completing these blank fields on your renewal application, please be sure to carefully review and update all other responses on your application to accurately reflect the current status of bicycle infrastructure and programming on your campus.

NOTE: If you’d prefer to start your renewal application from scratch rather than copy over your previous submission, you are welcome to do that at any time by clicking ‘Apply for BFU status’ here: http://apply.bikeleague.org.
 

 
UPDATED BFU APPLICATION QUESTIONS

We recently made some updates to the BFU application questions, and you can download a PDF preview document of the complete 2024 BFU application here. Recent changes and new questions are highlighted in yellow in the PDF preview document. 
 

Please see our BFU FAQs and Resources and BFU Application Process and Criteria for more information, as well as our new ‘BFA Online Application Portal FAQs’ page.

RETURNING BFU APPLICANTS FROM 2015 OR EARLIER: 

The Bicycle Friendly America program moved to a new online application system in April 2016. If you last applied to the Bicycle Friendly University program before 2016, you will need to create a new account to submit your renewal application. 

Click here to create a new account to renew your designation. 

If your last application was prior to 2016, please see our blog post announcing the launch of the new application portal to learn more about changes in features of the new online application system.

If you would like a PDF copy of your previous BFU application(s) or feedback report(s), please email us at bfa@bikeleague.org.