Team Shirts and sponsors

[Nirvash]

Hello CD,
This has come up in some of our team's recent meetings by some of the new members and a new mentor(New meaning this year, seeing as we are only a second year team). Should a team have their sponsor's on the back of the team t-shirts? This seems like a nobrainer to me and a lot of the team, and even though I expect I know what most of you would say, I thought that I'd see what the community here has to say.

[EricH]

Yes.

Your sponsors are part of your official team name. They support you. It's only proper to recognize them; in fact, it's required to have sponsor logos on the robot.

It's also common to have a tiering system, such that the more the sponsor donates, the bigger the logo and the more places it is. Respect the sponsor's wishes as far as placement as much as you can, too.

[AJCaliciuri]

Hey,
On our team, rather than putting our sponsors on our team shirts, we have Degrees of Sponsorship. The DoS outline various perks to sponsors depending on the amount (in-kind/monetary) they give us. For example:

Blizzard ($25+)
• PowerPoint recognition at official season launch
• Name on website
• Name in NNSRI’s Twelfth Chronicle – 200 page yearbook style binder

Ice Cap ($1000+)
• PowerPoint recognition at official season launch
• Logo on website
• Logo in “Pit” PowerPoint
• Logo in “Pit”
• Logo on robot
• Logo in NNSRI’s Twelfth Chronicle – 200 page yearbook style binder
• Recognition in Team Business Plan

North Pole $20,000+
• PowerPoint recognition at official launch
• Logo on website
• Logo in “Pit” PowerPoint
• Logo has dominance in the “Pit”
• A member of your organization travels with the team to any selected event.
• Name and logo/slogan on all sides of the packing crate
• Link to your business on our website
• Logo in NNSRI’s Twelfth Chronicle – 200 page yearbook style binder
• Recognition in Team Business Plan
• Naming of FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot
(We currently don't have any North Pole sponsors)

Check out the full DoS here: http://team1305.org/sponsors/sponsorship-degrees/

To sum up, although sponsors do a lot for your team and you want to recognize their contributions, there are many other ways to do it.

[N7UJJ]

Many years ago, we were interviewed by the local newspaper. We were sure to mention who our sponsors were and the paper printed thier names... except one. We explained to our sponsor that we surly gave them credit, but the writer dropped their name.

So...

Since that time, team 842 has always had our sponsors anmes and logos on the FRONT of out t-shirts. Whenever we get media coverage and there is a picture or a video, our sponsors see that we are doing our best to credit them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnzIYVUJzzM

[Billfred]

We've done it three of our four years (the first year was a bit of an oddity). The threshold to get on the shirt has varied--some years, it was the big-money sponsors. This year, the fundraising letter went out with a much lower threshold to get on the shirt. We honored it and made it work (the image is sitting in the CD-Media moderation queue).

But yes, do it. And if you've got room in the budget, give them a shirt too.

[cgmv123]

Here's our tiering system: http://www.badgerbots.org/get-involved/donate/

[thenomnivore]

Hello CD,
This has come up in some of our team's recent meetings by some of the new members and a new mentor(New meaning this year, seeing as we are only a second year team). Should a team have their sponsor's on the back of the team t-shirts? This seems like a nobrainer to me and a lot of the team, and even though I expect I know what most of you would say, I thought that I'd see what the community here has to say.
What i am really worried is if their is a limitations on who can be a FIRST team sponsor.
ie. people in the business of alcoholic or energy drinks

[popnbrown]

What i am really worried is if their is a limitations on who can be a FIRST team sponsor.
ie. people in the business of alcoholic or energy drinks

That's a really good point. I'm not sure what I would do if approached by a alcoholic drink business or similar type of business. I think it would be inappropriate and wouldn't encourage such a relation.

I don't see anything against energy drinks though.

[Dancin103]

Hello CD,
Should a team have their sponsor's on the back of the team t-shirts?

YES!

We put the sponsors on the robot, t-shirts, newsletters, and many more things if they gave us $1,000 or more. If they give less, they still get mentioned on our team website. It's a nice thank you to your sponsors. :)

[Andrew Lawrence]

What i am really worried is if their is a limitations on who can be a FIRST team sponsor.
ie. people in the business of alcoholic or energy drinks

Look at it this way. If we can get Monster to support FIRST, think how many people drink Monster.

While I would be weary of alcohol sponsors, you never know what kind of an audience is open to FIRST.

[EricH]

Officially, I don't remember seeing any limitations. However, companies would need to think through the implications of sponsoring various groups--to take the alcoholic drink example, if I'm a company that sells those, I don't necessarily want to have my name/logo all over a high school competition, because I could be seen as promoting underage drinking. So if I DO sponsor such a competition/team, I'm going to either do it through a proxy that most people won't recognize as being part of the company (or as a personal thing) or ask them for complete secrecy on everything except paperwork that is absolutely required (say, team financials). Which kind of defeats some of the point of sponsorship...

[Chris Fultz]

We have baseball style jerseys that we have used for about 7 years. They do not have sponsors on them so that they can be used for multiple seasons. These are our Friday / Saturday shirts at competitions.

Each year we do a "sponsor t-shirt" that has our major sponsors on it. We wear it on Thursdays at competitions.

We also do a "team t-shirt" that only has our team name and number on it.

Since we are a youth / school organization, we will not accept sponsorships from bars, pubs, alcohol or tobacco companies, or gun shops.

[smurfgirl]

We recognize our sponsors (anyone who gives us over $250) by displaying their logos on the back of our t-shirts, in our pamphlets, on our website, and on our robot. The more money the sponsor give us, the more prominence we give to their logo.

[thenomnivore]

while my school has encouraged and us to disassociate ourselves from alcohol distributes, we can still accept money without giving acknowledgement. (it seems a bit harsh to me, but c'est la vie) we still are pushing ourselves to get sponsored from Monster. who knows, maybe it'll open more doors to more teams.

[Pun-isher]

We actually went with making all of our sponsors' logos equal sized for aesthetic purposes, although the same template we used on the back of the shirts was reused for our robot. We had to end up cutting much of the sticker up due to lexan space, but it got every sponsor across, ensuring that one didn't overly stand out or one was hidden away.
http://i628.photobucket.com/albums/uu3/hadokenboom25/twoptoh/Catalog.jpg

[Mastonevich]

The idea of printing the sponsors on the shirts is an excellent practice IMO.

Something to consider is that sponsors change and it costs money to print t-shirts every year. My team re-uses (year after year) our 2 t-shirts and 1 polo that we wear to every event (It might even be considered GREEN). We have three shirts because we feel that most people appreciate the ability to change shirts each day at the competition. Because of these practices, our team does not print sponsors on any of our shirts.

[PAR_WIG1350]

The idea of printing the sponsors on the shirts is an excellent practice IMO.

Something to consider is that sponsors change and it costs money to print t-shirts every year. My team re-uses (year after year) our 2 t-shirts and 1 polo that we wear to every event (It might even be considered GREEN). We have three shirts because we feel that most people appreciate the ability to change shirts each day at the competition. Because of these practices, our team does not print sponsors on any of our shirts.

When I was a freshman and had only one team shirt I would wear another shirt under my team shirt and I would take my team shirt off upon arrival at the hotel.
Now that I have four shirts I wear them in an order that allows our current sponsors to get the most recognition by wearing shirts that list them as a sponsor on days when the most people are watching. I wore my 2010 shirt on the practice day (Thursday) since that doesn't really rob our current sponsors of publicity terribly much, especially since some of them are on that shirt anyways. On Friday, I wore my 2011 shirt (which I think actually has an extra sponsor on it, and nobody is left off). Then, on Saturday I wore this years shirt to have the most up to date list and the newest shirt on the day when the most eyes are watching. I was forced to get my 2009 shirt out after the competition concluded for the day on Friday because Boston was uncharacteristically hot this year.

tl;dr --> Even if your sponsors change from year to year you can still give them the recognition they deserve by properly planning your wardrobe schedule.