Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

Exactly.

What you DO have is time. Time to find some new sponsors, time to run some fund raisers, time to hit up parents and relatives.

There is a danger in having one major, consistent sponsor: It gets teams out of the habit of fundraising. But I assure, it can be done. Better to have six $1000 sponsors than one #6k sponsor. Or maybe 60 $100 sponsors...

We pull in over $2k on each of our car washes (we run 2 a year). The trick is pre-selling the tickets. Each student gets a book of 10 tickets ($5 per ticket) and needs to return with $50 in hand. There is a prize for the most tickets sold, too. Sure, some kids can't sell 10 tickets, but they need to understand that they need to try hard.

2 carwashes Shaun and you are 2/3 there...

How can I help?

Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

This is very true, we have gotten very lazy with raising money. It will be fun to get the team moving this summer looking for new sponsors.

Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

As weird as this sounds, it might be a good thing for the team in the long run. You all are extremely lucky to have been notified now rather than closer to build.

Losing that 6K should push kids on the team to not only make up that 6k, but also to push past just raising 6K and really start gathering funds for more situations like this. Maybe make it a goal to raise 10K total instead of just the 6K you lost. This can be done with multiple simple fundraisers + large fundraisers such as dinners + really pushing your kids to go out and get multiple smaller sponsors.

Some perspective: 11 lost a long standing $10K sponsor in November and had to analyze how to save money and stay within budget with two robots two districts + a regional. But things like this just keep teams prepared and aware of what the real world can be like. The lesson that this might teach teams is to never be comfortable with their financial situations and to always fundraise on top of sponsor donations. Analyze your budgets: are you really using every penny to the best of your abilities? Are there ways you can save money on materials? Find lower cost vendors, find material donors, find a different construction method maybe? All I have to say is that I love the district system because of things like this.

Best of luck, PM me if you need assistance with fundraisers.

Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

We received our letter today.

I'll echo the same sentiments above - diversifying your sponsor base is the best way to insulate your team from the loss of a major sponsor. Our Finance and Marketing subteams represent about 30% of our student members, and they work nearly year round following new leads, keeping in touch with existing sponsors, and running fundraisers.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet - this isn't necessarily the end of Bristol-Myers Squibb's involvement with FIRST. The letter indicated that it was due to a reduction in the community outreach budget, and that those funds may be restored/available in some way for the 2014-2015 season.

BMS (and Fred Egenolf) have been a fantastic supporter of our team and many others in the area. We certainly wouldn't be where we are today without their support. They were our major corporate sponsor starting in the 2010 season, as we transitioned off the NASA rookie/2nd year grants. Hopefully we'll see BMS logos on robots again in the 2015 season.

Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

LEGO Camps have been very productive in raising funds, specially during the summer. Usually charge $75 to $100 per student. Usually need $2,000 in donated LEGO Mind storm kits to get started.

Cheers,
Marcos.

Re: BMS ends sponsorship of teams
 

VRC, "LEGO", and FTC (at least) all fit into this category. Expand to anything do-able with an Arduino or a Pi, and you can create a very substantial portfolio of low-barrier-to-entry, win-win, money-makers (that also, oh by the way, are examples of exactly the sort of infuse-STEM-into-the-fabric-of-communities cultural change that programs like VRC, BEST, FIRST, etc. are designed to catalyze).

Blake