!Poll! Difficulty with funding

[talldude1412]

Does your team have sufficient funding to do everything they want to do each year?

[Stuart]

unfortunatly this year team 1745 is so short on funds(our total buget for this year was about $8k) that we are haveing to ask the students to pay the difference to travil to our regional. . .so yeah that sucks

[ReaverOfSouls]

Our team is a rookie team so has alot of difficulty finding funds.

[Andrew Y.]

we are doing alright, we have a few small local ones and the rest o the money we make selling pizza at the Georgia Dome

[DjAlamose]

Well, we have usually had money but this year our sponsor had to do some budget cuts so we got a little less funding. I really hope our sponsor (Dana) has a better year this year so we can have our funding next year, but on Friday their stocks went from ~$10 down to $1.51.... So I really hope we can still get funded next year. We are a team that will stick it out; we can and will find more funding even if we have to give up going to nats.

[aksimhal]

We were only able to fund raise $6,500 this year (2005-2006), and that includes the $6,000 registration fee! :ahh:

[Adam Richards]

I highly doubt many teams have the funding to do exactly what they want every year, since I'm pretty sure every team who had the chance would go to 3 regionals, championships, and every offseason in a 1000 mile radius.

My team has personally had fundraising amounts to sufficiently meet one regional fee each year, but due to our sponsor for the past two seasons (2005/2006), we've been able to get all the money needed to build the robot past the $6000 entry fee easily.

[Billfred]

1293's doing alright. School District Five covers the registration fee for Palmetto, and our sponsors do wonders when it comes to parts to build the robot (either making the parts themselves or covering a batch of something, such as an order from IFI). Of course, we do our best to cultivate new sources of support--if you look at our T-shirts, the list tends to grow longer each season.

[KTorak]

unfortunatly this year team 1745 is so short on funds(our total buget for this year was about $8k) that we are haveing to ask the students to pay the difference to travil to our regional. . .so yeah that sucks

I hate to tell you this, but most students pay for everything. On 1023, each student is responsible for any/all travel costs. This includes air fare/gas, hotel room(s), meals, etc.

1023 manages to get enough to attend one regional (GLR - no over night stay or anything) and to attend Championships. Our main sponsor donates $2500 in the beginning, and another $2500 between GLR and ATL (La-z-Boy) and we have many others that donate around $500 and some lesser donations. After that, it's up to use to fundraise...in which we usually get around $3-4k a year. Luckily, we encounter very little robot build expenses because Midwest Fluid Power donates all of our materials for free (80/20, etc).

[Sgraff_SRHS06]

I voted "no" because we want to go to the Championship and we want to go to other regionals in the future (Candidates included Philly, VCU, and Boston), but we need more contributions from our sponsors. Either that, or get some big corporation to donate like $50k to us.

[Bill_Hancoc]

We have enough money to get by but we cant really expand on what we do and make a better bot than "the year before"

[Master Dictator]

The money we get from Sponsers goes to registration. The rest of the money is donated by everyone on the team. Pay as you go. For travaling our school has to cover all of it since we are a "School team" and the school covers for football and basketball teams, our way of sticking it to the man or the school whatever you want to call it. :D

[Dillon Compton]

We've been generously funded since our inception, and especially this year and last year... This is actually mostly "fundraising" with a little help from our school board memebers, we successfully raised ~70,000 in fall 2004. Some of those funds were donated to the school to aid in new physics curriculum development and science equipment purchasing (we are a charter school and so much of our money needs to be raised, as we get about 1/3rd of the funding of a public school from the state), but we were left with a fairly generous budget for the 2005 & 2006 competition years. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our team and shop, we pretty much lose alot of our funds; we cannot weld or mill any parts, so we rely primarily on 80/20- we dont have a CAD person, or autodesk, so getting specific amounts early on is difficult- we tend to order enough of everythinh to cover design + contingencies, and typically due to funding access through the school, we have to overnight ship everything. We rely heavily on mcmaster, smallparts, andymark, and other such excellent(yet pricey) suppliers...

The result of this is a robot that tends to match the function of the general field, but at a relatively high cost (last year we spent close to $1500 on shipping alone, I think). Additionally, our budget covers most travel expenses- that has changed for nationals this year, since we want to buy a mill and a lathe before funding dries up, but last year we flew 8 kids + 2 mentors to atlanta, and drove a mentor and 12 other kids down, and payed for their hotel rooms- all out of our budget.

So, I think we are, monetarily, on the more "have" side of the spectrum- but we still run out of a shop in a basement, with a drill press, a handheld bandsaw, a mitersaw, and a grinder(not even joking- thats all we've got, aside from cordless drills & etc...)

I'm going to go finish homework, and send an email off reminding the mentors that we'd better get on sponsor recruitment again!
Good luck to all this season.

-Dillon Compton

[Donut]

We have enough to go to one regional and build a robot. One sponsor pays for the intial registration, the other pays for parts and helps with machining. We stock pile extra funds (basically what we fundraise) so that every 2 or 3 years the team can go to Nationals.

I'm hoping the fact we can't go to any other competitions this year will wake up alot of the new members in the club to help us fundraise more (we had a very large rollover this year and had all of the previous officers graduate or resign due to other commitments, and roughly half the club this year is new). We've gotten many suggestions such as "I know this one company that might be willing to...", however no one has actually gotten any kind of contact information, and internal problems with the officers have prevented us from doing any effective work with getting corporate sponsors.

We did manage to have a LAN party and a week long bagel sale though, which is good for us considering I don't remember the club even doing one fundraising activity while I've been part of it.

[lil_longo]

we didnt have that bad mercedes donates 10k to us and some of the our team donates like 1k alot. to go to trenton each kid only has to pay 50 bucks for the hotel for 3 nightes so we do ok we only raised like 25k this year we were shooting for more so we dont have to pay anything but u no wat ever

[BRosser314]

This year we plan to attend 3 regoinals (Great Lakes, Midwest, and West Michigan). We hope we do good in our first two so we can cancel going to West Michigan and go to Nationals instead. Although we would like to go to Atlanta again we would have to get more funding since we have only budgeted for those regionals. If we did get to go to Atanta then we would have to raise about $250-$300 more then we planned on. As for kids paying for trips we each have to pay for our trips we go on, luckily to go on 3 trips it is only costing us about $515 for each student. We do many team fundraisers like candy sale in school, cookie dough, bowling fundraiser/ bowl-a-thon, and raffle tickets. We try to find some local businesses to help us but it is very hard to find help. After loosing our machine shop and one of our 2 main sponsors we had to pay for all the materials we needed and all the labor for the precision things to get done. Hopefully by the end of season we will have another sponsor, and be able to go to Nationals if we qualify.

I remeber in 2004 we won in Los Angeles with team 69 and 980, in which we qualified for nationals, we raised enough money for payment and students to travel in less then 4 weeks.

[Janet Schoettle]

This is a tough question! We don't have enough to do everything we might want to do, but we have enough money to do everything we have to do (register, build and ship the bot, get our volunteer mentors to competitions.) Students have to cover their own travel expenses, which discourages some from participating, and build season meals are brought in by team families (Yum!) It has taken about six years to build up a stable base of contributions, but we now are fairly confident that we will be able to cover the basics.

[MattB703]

Well, seeing that I work for our major sponsor I will have to say that we are generously funded compared to many teams. But, you asked if we are able to do "everything we want". Well, there will always be more things that I would like to do.

[Rickertsen2]

We had just enough money for the registration and to build our robot with no money left over for ANYTHING. We had to use certian alternative parts in a few cases because we couldn't afford what we wanted.

Ideally we would have money for the robot, 2 regionals and a little money for misc things such as a pit hut.

[CourtneyB]

We do pretty good every year with funding...we sell raffle tickets every year for the end of the year party, we usually sell fanny may every year, and kripy creme donuts every eyar at the homecoming football game and at the school.
-Court-

[Rick TYler]

we only raised like 25k this year we were shooting for more so we dont have to pay anything but u no wat ever

Heh. In the three years of its existence, our team has raised a total of about $23,000. I still have an envelope of receipts from 2005 for which I will never be reimbursed. Students, don't forget that your mentors may be contributing more than their time.

[Martinez]

Chuck has an unbelieable budget. This year we managed to build a robot, attend two regionals, and give a free ride to all our students. All this from a very modest amount. When I saw the numbers one day, I just went 'Wow'. I'm very impressed by it, and it gives me hope that the team I'm starting will be able to do the same.

Division by Zero on the other hand I know got hit by a Clarkson budget cut. After last season and knowing the great fokes they are, I feel really sad for 'em.
:(

[Tim566]

no team is ever completely satisfied with their budget and if they are chances are they are sharing it and wish they had more to share. So I don't believe any team is truly satisfied.

[Robocat1]

The Robocats, Team 379, raise over $20,000 a year in fundraising (each team member must raise $500, or pay, in order to attend the 3 competitions we enter each year). We fundraise 12 months a year!

We also write grants and local small businesses/clubs are recruited to donate (ranging from $25 to $1,200). We have no corporate sponsor now, although we did have GM Lordstown for our first 3 years ($5,000, 3 employees - not engineers - and a van for competition transportation of tools).

Our school pays only about $3000 for advisor stipends (we even pay for our buses and bus driver hotel room/food and subs to cover the two school advisors). We have about 25 team members.

Every year we plan to attend 2 local regionals (CLE, where we don't spend the night, even thought its 90 minutes away) and PIT or MI (we don't stay in PIT either) and one "big" trip - nationals or another regional where we go a day earlier to tour. CLE & PIT in the same week hurt us this year! Students (and advisors & community volunteer mentors), even if they meet the $500 fundraising goal, still pay for their food & admission to any "tours" we go on.

Regarding "canceling" a regional to attend Nationals if you qualify - we tried to cancel Toronto two years ago after we won the CLE Chairman's Award, but we not permitted to do so. Rather than loose the registration fee, we left home at 2 a.m. TH to get to competition with, I think, 6 students and 2 advisors and competed (and made it to semi-finals). We did manage to raise enough to get to Atlanta, but it wasn't easy!

Maybe FIRST can find a way to be more flexible in the future. It cost us about $10,000 to attend nationals with 16 students! (Reg. fee, hotel, air fare - cheaper to fly than take a bus!). Canceling the Toronto trip and getting our $5000 registration fee back would have been helpful.