Quote:
Originally Posted by Damorian
-How did you guys finance your projects? How did you find benefactors?
-What majors were your team members? I imagine most of you all were engineering majors? Any CS?
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Hi Keith!
1. GO FIRST was financed by a grant we had requested before we learned about this competition that we were originally going to use for a demonstration ground robot. That money ended up going to the first part of the Quad Copter.
We were also financed by our College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, who with out their support we wouldn't have been able to cover the trip down to the event. They covered our travel, hotel, and marketing costs making them our largest sponsors. They are unable to support individual FRC teams around the area (they do help sponsor and promote the regional) so being able to support a Collegiate team from their school is an avenue where they would be able to support FIRST.
We also were able to get into contact with ATK a company who ended up giving us a donation that allowed us to finish our Quad copter.
National Instruments was able to sponsor us with an in-kind donation of a single board rio.
For ATK and NI both companies we were able to connect with at a career event where one of our students mentioned their involvement in FIRST and what we were doing now.
A local technical college, Dunwoody Institute of Technology, was able to help us by welding our GV frame together.
Additional money came from grants from the school and from other FRC teams for parts and from the local student chapter of IEEE that reserves money to help student groups on projects similar to this.
Next year we have student service fees to work with.
2. Our majors include- Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Chemistry, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, CSCI, and mine is Scientific and Technical Communications.
3. We have 15 members involved with CARD and about 30 who are part of GO FIRST. We really have 20 core members in our organization.