Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

Our team is not a separate entity from the school, however, it depends on how you have things setup in terms of donations, bank account, 501c3, etc.
Those things are separate from the school to a certain extent, as we have multiple avenues in how we receive funding.
If you are a public school, donations made to the school on behalf of your team should be tax-deductible. I really dont see how letters cant be sent out asking for donations unless its a "policy" rather than law.
If anything, it is less complicated working in the school.
Setting up a 501c3 non-profit organization requires a lot of work, and I spend quite a bit of time doing paperwork for our team and meeting compliance issues. If it were just a school club account like how we did things before, it would be much much easier than complicated. However, it limited how and what we could receive.
Hope you folks can iron things out and get the support you need.

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

Do your letters suggest that the donation may be tax deductible? For our school district, inorder for a donation to be tax deductible it has to be given to the district at large and allocated by the district in what ever way they see fit - which may not be for the robotics team. We learned this when we asked the school for the Tax Number that our sponsors should use for the tax deduction and they said - you can't do that!

We currently advise our students to tell potential sponsors that they should consider their sponsorship of us as part of their advertising budget, and produce a patron books containing all if the "ads" and distribute it to all the patrons and community at large. We also acknowledge them in newsletters, on our website and on our t-shirts and robot (depending on the size of the sponsorship). It's quite a lot of advertising bang for the buck, at least that's what we tell the sponsors!

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

It's probably some really small technicality that no one would normally care about. My advice is to have your mentor try to set up your team as a completely separate entity from the school, and instead have the school as one of your sponsors. That way, your team is entirely responsible for their own funding. However, you need to have an adult mentor who really knows the laws about this sort of stuff, otherwise you're liable to get in even more trouble. But, in my opinion, it's much better for the team.
Of course, if you can get your team set up as a 501c3 organization that's completely separate from the school, that's the best situation. All donations are tax-deductible, your team controls it, and you don't have the politics of the school board to go through. If you have a student whose parent/relative is an accountant, or if you can convince a nearby accountant to donate their time to your team, this would be the best course to follow.

In the short-term, if you need to talk to your school board, I'd advise that you contact each member of the board individually. Have a student (or two, or three...) talk to each board member about what FIRST is and why it's so great for the school. Maybe even have your mentor discuss potential legal issues with a few of them. After you've won a few over, bring up the issue at a board meeting. Our school district usually holds a public-accessible board meeting every month. Have your team wear their shirts and attend the meetings. Get a bunch of family members and friends to wear team shirts and go as well. Politicking is all about showing that you have strong support behind your goal, and that's most visible when a large group of people at the board meeting is wearing a shirt advertising your team.

Good luck!! Hope it turns out for the best for your team. :D

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

Ack! We have the same problem...

Except we're a private school. Which can be just as complicated.

What we have to do is run our letters through our Communications people, just to check if any of the people we're trying to get to sponsor us already sponsor the school or something like that.

For instance: based out of Atlanta, an obvious sponsor would be Coca-Cola, especially since many parents of kids at the school work at Coke (including my mom. And the CEO and several board members had kids at our school). However, we're not really allowed to ask them since our school has a partnership with Coke, so that didn't work out. (YET ;))

Even though there are obvious differences between private and public schools, there should be someone who has a list of potential sponsors that have been sought in the past. Now the question is, is that person at your school or part of the larger school district system?

For a time, we were banned from approaching anyone to sponsor us. Now we're given a very limited degree, but still better than before, and running letters by the Communications Director cleared things up for us.

Best of luck!

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

Best thing is to set up your own 503-C non profit corporation/foundation.
We are inc. in California and have the paperwork with the feds for our non profit status. Then the next step is to file with your state. First step: set up your board of directors, make your by-laws and vote on them. Draft and file your articles of incorporation in your state. Set up your own bank account for robotics seperatly. It takes time, alot of paperwork, but in the end, your robotics program is own its own and easier to run. Good luck.

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

Or form a partnership with 4-H and get some added benefits as well!

Re: Fundraising legal issues with the Phila School District.
 

It's all well and good for people to say "Go Independent" to get around school rules. However you do have to be careful if you choose that path. If you tick off too many people, the school may say that they will not support the team at all, including not giving permission to miss school for competitions.