[BJC]

Applying for the NASA and jcp Grants are good things to do. However, they are not solid enough to rely for the long term. I would highly suggest putting togeather an informational packet about your team to give to potential sponsors. While you can't say what sort of stuff your team has done (because you haven't done anything yet) you can certainly explain the values of FIRST and how their money can help make a difference in your team's and America's success. When we are presenting our team to various companies this is always very important to them.

In 2010 after we lost our sponsorship from Chrysler, we had our team budget nearly cut in half. This was devestating and we knew that unless we did something about it we would not be able to compete at our normal level the next year. We ended up putting togeather a trifold brochure and team informational packet including prices for various sponsorship levels. Our parents then went and contacted their respective companies and relatives companies. Meanwhile students also found other prospective companies. We sent letters to each asking for a meeting. This meeting is crutial to success. We'll have a group of 4-5 student at the meeting at the prospective sponsor's company who have prepared a presentation covering FIRST and our team. They practice potential questions and handshakes beforehand in addition to their speaking skills. Students must be confident during the presentation and a firm handshake at the beginning can set the tone right from the get-go. Bringing a robot to demo is also very important. Even top CEOs are very impressed when they see that highschoolers built these robots. During this meeting you also present them with your trifold packets and brochures. After the meeting you follow up with a thank you letter for allowing you the time to present your team to their company. Once they become a sponsor we give them each a plaque for them to hang on their wall showing that they sponsor us. We also invited all the CEOs to our kickoff and unveiling party at Chrysler. In fact we even made an unveiling video for them this year. Keeping your sponsors involved and up to date will ensure that they stick around for the years to come. This system worked very well for us and we ended up with a budget which far exceeded our previous one. We plan to do basically the same thing this year, except perhaps a bit less finatically.

I highly suggest that you implement something similar in order to maintain long term finantial stability.

Good Luck, Bryan