Sponsorship Help please
 

Ok so I am stuck in a conondrum. Somewhere in the manual it says that You must have stickers of your sponsors on the robot, but our school has polocies against advertising. So when a local restaraunt said they would like to sponsor us, our school said no because we would have to put their name on our robot. Anyone have an idea? I am totally at a loss. By the way, the schools reasoning for restricting advertising is that they dont want to be responsible for drawing the line between what companies are appropriate for allowing to advertise (If say zig-zag papers wanted to contribute, or Budwiser)

Re: Sponsorship Help please
 

Not necessarily stickers, but you MUST have your sponsors listed on your robot. If you do not recognize your sponsors, you will not be allowed to compete. You will fail the inspection, as we did last year.

If the school intends for you to participate, you must find a way to compromise on this issue.

Since you are not a rookie team this year, I assume that you have done something to avoid this issue in the past.

Re: Sponsorship Help please
 

The FRC rules (specifically, Rule <R14>) require that you include the name and/or logo of your primary sponsor on your robot when it is on the field, as part of the formal signage to recognize the contributions of the sponsors. Your school has rules against advertising. No problem. They are two different things, and the rules do not conflict.

When you are complying with the FRC rules, you are indicating sponsorship and participation with your FIRST team. You are not advertising. And if someone is concerned that displaying a corporate logo is "a little too close to the line" then just put the company name on the robot instead. That should satisfy any concerns.




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Re: Sponsorship Help please
 

If your school is willing to do this, at least print out your sponsor names and put them on the robot. Just stating the name of a company should not be considered advertising on the bot.

Anyways, work this out with your school. If they refuse to, ask if they have another idea that will work such that you will be allowed to participate in the competition.

Good luck with this.

Re: Sponsorship Help please
 

Actually this is our first non educational group sponsor we have had. We have always had 2 wondeful sponsors but both were organizations that exsited in order to sponsor educational activities, not a corporation.

Re: Sponsorship Help please
 

The rule says you need to put your primary sponsor on the robot, but is the restaurant really your primary sponsor? and can you get them to agree to sponsor you without putting their name on the robot? Not all of our sponsors get their name/logo on our robot....