Fundraising Ideas.
 

Hello

My team and I are curious of how your team fund raises! We have a few ideas such as selling subs and what not ,but do you have a unique fundraising idea that our team could use?

5740

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Our team hasn't done this, but a Cub Scout pack I was involved in did. We would make $600-$1000 with hitting up 4-5 neighborhoods.

Pine Straw delivery. We didn't spread it for them, just delivered.

We would make just under $1 per bail. There are some nice things about this....

1. We were market price. I hate selling a box of popcorn for $15, when the store has it for $5.

2. A lot of people can't easily transport the number of bails they need, so it's a product they want.

3. No door to door sales. We would just tape a flyer to their mail box pole. They would call a number leave a VM with their order.

4. You have exact order before buying the pine straw.

5. Easy delivery, we would deliver all bails within 3-4 hrs.

6. And finally, people need pine straw twice a year. They come to expect your sales.


Brian

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Car Washes!!! Storm Robotics just had a car wash in weather that was less than ideal. It was cloudy and looking like it was going to rain and we still managed to bring in around $1000. Not bad for six hours of soapy hands :P We also sold baked goods a drinks for a dollar each. Reach out to a local gas station that gets some good traffic with room for a cars to be washed and voila, you've got an awesome way to help pay for a robot and events!

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

One of the favorite fundraisers that our team does is a haunted house every October. Our town has a local "Halloween Party" for the kiddos in Merrimack, and we are able to take over one of the buildings on the property. We design a new haunted house every year, coming up with a new theme (last year it was Frankenstein's castle, the year before was a creepy circus).

Its really fun to build all the cool elements to the haunted house, and then spook all the people that come to it. Even without access to a building like we do for the event, I don't see why it would be unreasonable to build something like what we do that would serve the same purpose.

A haunted house I think is just a great way to raise some money, as we usually have tons of interest and sell cider and hot chocolate as well. We have done a demo at the same time as well to show off your robot as well!

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Thanks guys for all the help!

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Keep your eyes on this page throughout the year for grant opportunities.

https://usfirst.submittable.com/submit

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Out of necessity several years ago--a student started a rumor we were going to a Hawaiian regional and POOF! 70 potential team members--I bought a simple screen press and taught myself how to print t-shirts. I intended it simply to defray the team's cost, but with no marketing, I am always busy with shirts. We have grossed (not netted) about 4000 in 2016. I have a local golf outing's shirts to print still and there's more on the way.

Was it the easiest thing to do? Did/do I often wonder why I'm mashing ink through a screen? Those questions are there, but it has gotten easier now that I'm training team members. There is a start up cost and you definitely get what you pay for. It is an investment though if there's any stick-to-it-iveness.

A second one we fell into was, due to our proximity and the graciousness of our FBLA group, Notre Dame football concessions. The team and parents/friends/relatives sign up and work one of the many concessions stands. When all was said and done, we made a good chunk of change and we're in for another season.

The kicker is that I cannot bribe a student or team of students to put together an entrepreneurship submission.......

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Get your teacher mentor (must be a teacher and in the U.S.) to use DonorsChoose.org and put projects up. People WANT to buy classrooms stuff and they really want to buy robotics teams stuff.

You can private message me and I will give you/your mentor my email. It is SUPER simple and there are match codes many many many times throughout the year. This is my main source of fundraising, besides selling about 5000 boxes of fruit by the foot.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

The trick to car washes is pre-selling tickets. Even if they don't show up, you have raised fund.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

If you do a car wash, make sure you can have a garden hose with good water pressure set up. Believe it or not, a mall had a complimentary car wash with valet parking several years ago. They couldn't get a hose for washing, so what did they do? They parked the cars first, then used one of those hand pumped bug sprayer things to RINSE the cars. Needless to say, it wasn't very effective, and a lot of cars probably left not much cleaner and with more scratches.

Great idea! Maybe also find a way to incorporate the robot into the haunted house...

Yes! Don't forget to charge extra if they want soap, a rinse, and/or if they want you to dry their car. :D

Raffles are good too if you can get enough items.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Book sales. Results may vary based on location (we're in a densely populated part of Manhattan). We sell books that are donated by team members and people in our school. We attract customers with robot demos on the sidewalk. It doubles as outreach and fundraising, which is just dandy. On a good day, we can net more than $1,000

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

How in the world would you deliver 1,000 bails of hay? And how would do it with only 3-4 hours notice.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Pine straw != hay.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Similarly, "bail" != "bale"...

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

We would put the flyers out about 3 weeks before the delivery day, a Saturday. People would leave a voice mail with the how many they would need. Then the Wednesday before delivery, we would let the landscape company, that sells pine straw, how many we needed. The chairman would layout delivery routes and give them to drivers. We had about 3-4 parents that had open top trailers. The parents would drive to the landscape company, and load up with 30-50 bails of pine straw. Then cars would drive their route with a follow car of about 3 people to help deliver. Most people bought 20-30, so it would take about 5-10 minutes to unload their order, usually leaving it on the driveway. People would pay at that time. We had the Scouts do all the money collection.

Keep going until they ran out of pinestraw, then they would go back for more. It would take about 30-40min to refill and get to the next house, when they ran out. Now if you could get a 27ft ryder panel truck donated, it would be even easier.

Brian

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

RoboCamps. We are annually raising 5 digit sums by providing robotics-based child care during our school vacation. PM me if you want our resources.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Our team for the first time this year tried giftwrapping!

At a local Barnes and Nobles, we offered around 6 hours of our time a few days before Christmas day and set up a small tips jar.

We didn't gross much, but I'm sure if you had a more tactical plan you would make more (we did it as a spur of the moment thing).

Something like that, when made large scale with proper planning, I'm sure would get you a decent bit of funds.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

An idea that has been thrown around a couple times on my team (although we have never accomplished it) is a team yard sale. Team members and their families can bring in anything they want to sell, and have an enormous sale.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Well, no, but Don hit the nail on the head with pre-selling tickets. IIRC, 1676 made $8,000 from their annual Fall car-wash alone last year. Tickets were $5 each. Get your local FLL and FTC teams involved to help out too, both with selling tickets and to lend hands at the event. More tickets sold --> More cars able to be washed --> More $ for all programs.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

I believe that you do indeed remember correctly. That's pre-sales plus drive-by sales plus tips. It helps to have a little kid (maybe 5 or 6 - supervised of course) manning the tip bucket. We've had folks pay $5 for a wash and drop a $20 in the bucket.


Then there is Legos and a Movie: Kid-friendly movie (like Robots, or some other disney-pixar), and beforehand they get to build a Lego creation (using all those legos collected from our FLL qualifier, plus donations). We charge a small fee for the legos, but you can include that with the movie.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Our youth group at church did our car wash by donation. Some would give $10, some $100. With a preset price, a lot of people will just pay that price, and not think about giving more. But we are pretty rural, so not sure how it would work with pre-selling here.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Can you elaborate on how you did pre-sales? Someone collecting at a school; online?

Also interested in where you guys held it, how you advertised it, your layout, etc. As much info as you guys can provide would be very valuable to me, this sounds like a great fundraising opportunity.

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

I've had a ton of PMs about RoboCamps. With an approaching thesis deadline, I'm passing this along to our RoboCamps coordinator. You can get in touch with him directly by emailing robocamps@firstaustralia.org

Re: Fundraising Ideas.
 

Josh,

Once my finals finish next week, I hope to write a White Paper detailing how 1676 organizes and runs their annual car wash. I'll be sure to post the link to it here once completed.