Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

Ok so I have a few suggestions. To get money for your students for hotels and things like that, then have fundraisers in the summer time and in the fall that will go directly to student trips. If the student does not participate then they don't get a cut in the money made. And my other suggestion is to really look into corrporate sponsors. Even if you don't have a huge corrporate sponsor, its ok because all the little ones add up in the end. Getting money and support for teams has to be one of the hardest parts of participating in FIRST, but in the end all that hard work pays off.
If you have any questions about sponsorship and fundraising leave me a message and I will be more than willing to help.

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

There's a big difference between requiring a fee for "participating", and requiring a fee for travel.

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

I think its actually a fairly uncommon thing for teams to have CNC Machines or even standard bridgeport mills. The only reason my high school team had one was because our school had it for a machine shop class, and it somehow ended up being used for our robot. Many of the teams I work with in Boston (about 5) don't even have any sort of heavy machinery-just hand drills and a small drill press.

As for the money issue:

I think part of the problem is the team doesn't really have much of an organized budget. You should assess what you need, what you think you could use in the future, and what you want to do for regionals and traveling.

Its kind of frustrating me that people are saying that going to 5 events is ridiculous (trust me, I agree) but not saying why it could be a bad idea or the benefits of going to less competitions. Going to 4 regional competitions this year may seem like a good idea at the time, but how does that really help the future of the team? Because it seems like $12,000 could be spent elsewhere (if your team just goes to one regional and Atlanta). Going to less competitions can help to offset the costs for travel for each team member (allowing more students to participate!) and can save money for the team to do cool stuff in the future. Instead of going to so many regionals, consider doing a lot of off-seasons instead! They are a lot less money, and sometimes a lot more fun!

Using some of the money elsewhere like investing in a new set of tools or spare parts for off season projects and things like that can really build the foundation for future years.

As for the approaching business aspect, here are some tips:
1. Get the parents involved! A lot of parents have either friends or colleagues in local businesses who may be interested in helping out. Connections are always helpful.
2. HAVE A PLAN:
-Make a promotional packet to bring to these businesses. Showing up to
organized and professional can help lots!
-Show these business what you are about! invite them to demonstrations, show them how FIRST has impacted students, then they are more likely to give you money.


hope some of this helps :)

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

Check out teams like ThunderChickens (217) and Rush (27). Or our team, IMPI Robotics 1025 - we have a $100 participation fee, plus at least $400 more in fundraising.

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

I am curious as stated before on why you folks have not invested more on infrastructure, electing instead to attend 4 regionals and CMP. I initially assumed that you folks had all that stuff, since anyone paying well over 20k for registration fees alone would have so much more.
Putting effort on sustainability, diversification, and growth will lead to gains in any program.......thus a business entrepreneurship plan.:D
I think we probably spend the most every year for travel, however, we would never compromise any other parts of our program with those kinds of expenses.

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

I feel the same way, I intend to mentor a team when I can mange to, but unless you want to come to Jersey and mentor the team we still are trapped with supervisors who need the money/ don't share your sentiments.
This is going to be quite lengthy because I intend to respond cumulatively.
1- Paid Mentors- we have little choice because our program is linked to the school. With out paying the mentors we would not be allowed to use the school's space and the few tools we do have are not even ours but the schools. We do have a volunteer mentor and he is a tremendous help but we do not have the connections to get volunteer mentors and have a place to work and tools to work with.
2-Harbor freight/discount- it is a great option for some things but the quality is just so poor it really won't save you any money. We tried it for end mills and ended up spending the same amount of money as one good on three low quality ones that dulled really fast.
3-1929- We do and don't share a budget; we split what we get from the school and the fees for the mentors. After that, we have our sponsors and they have theirs. However, working in the same room on the same tools does mean that we order things cross budget For instance they order some steel and we need some we will tack on our order, but next time it will be on our account. They only competed at New York because that is all they could afford; we brought them with us down to Trenton because they enjoy the events as we do.
4-Student cost- our students pay for the whole deal (minus registration to event) including the mentor's costs. Usually this runs over a grand, usually being years we go to one or two regionals, but this year it was insane! Over 3 grand for the trips, the only saving grace was we were supposed to have scholarships from sponsors.
5-5 Competitions- Yeah we knew it was a horrible idea as soon as we were told, but it wasn't our choice. We afforded that slew of trips because of the surplus growing in our budget over our 8 years, now it's gone and I'm asking on what other teams do to stay afloat.
456 as long as we can afford it we will definitely be back, we had a blast in Louisiana.
6- Fundraisers- (hey finally something related to my original question) we have tried a few kinds of fundraisers and they always fail, meaning we are more in the hole then before. I wondered if anyone had types of fundraisers that work well for their team. Christine thanks for the idea about local businesses. We will probably try that over the summer, toss the robot in a pick-up and drive around to businesses in our area.

I definitely agree about building a better infrastructure; but I have no idea how to do that. Every other year we had money to add to our surplus and we knew if anything major came up we could deal with it but that security blanket is gone now. We already scheduled a meeting about ideas for fundraising after Atlanta and next years leaders have realized we can't spend our money on what is fun or shiny just because it will mean we have fun for a moment. My big question is how do I get the students and mentors to work together comprehensibly on our purchase decisions and focus' for expenditures?

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

Let's see...School district said "Oh look, money in the robotics team account! If they don't use it, they lose it." Is that what happened with the surplus? If so, then I don't exactly blame you.

As for fundraisers...
There are all sorts of ideas in the fundraising section. Car washes, pasta dinners, raffles, golf tournaments, and the like. The odd garage sale works too.

How to build an infrastructure...
If you have a bit of surplus (other than say $6K), then you get one thing. Repeat whenever you have the budget. Donated equipment is nice too, if it's in decent shape. It'll build up over time.

Getting the team to work together on this...
You're going to have to tell them that they're going to have to think about where their money is going. That's just the way it is. If you don't need it, then don't get it. Sure it's fun to go to more competitions, but where does it get you in the long run? Maybe one extra competition and a small mill would have been a better route.

The best way for this is to go into lessons learned this year. If they can apply those, then they'll be in good shape.

Re: Low sponsorship, but ok money
 

Fundraisers have to have an enormous amount of upfront planning to be successful...

We did a simple spaghetti dinner this year.... as we shopped around we got nearly all of the supplies for free... parents chipped in doing cooking and planning and decorating.

We added a small auction of some simple things like old t-shirts and framed and autographed team portraits... and we auctioned off the services of the team members to do yard or garage clean up...

We also added a dessert auction. We got several desserts donated and parents brought in their "dessert baskets" These were also auctioned off...

In the end we made a profit of nearly $8000... primarily due to the good pre-planning and the efforts of parents... This money was split among all the student that worked the fundraiser... and it counted toward the money that each student must fundraise to travel with the team..

On our team... each regional requires the fundraising of $250... this covers travel expenses and other sundries... For Atlanta we also require an additional $250.

Because we are so far away from Atlanta, we require students to pay for their own airfare to CMP. Fundraising pays for hotel expenses and registration but students have to pay only for airfare when required. We also only have juniors and seniors travel to Atlanta. This gives Freshman and Sophomores 2 years to start their airfare fundraising.

Fundraisers must be planned very well to be successful...
This requires the help of a parent booster club... so establishing one of these is very important...

I hope this helps!!!