Quote:
Originally posted by Cory
The economy is so bad that we have only found enough $$ for two comps, building the bot, and absolutely nothing left over for next year. we too have been limited in machine shop hours, because we practically lived there for the six weeks.
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We haven't had computers in past years. Work had to be done at home. This year we have 1 laptop donated by a sponsor, one lent computer from same sponsor, another mentor lending a computer soon, a couple of students and a mentor bring in their laptops.
We work next to a room with lots of computers, but we're not allowed a school computer. They're "dedicated" computers to a grant, and we're not allowed to use them.
Money left over for the next year?!?
Our main partner, TRW, was sold to Northrup and we're getting mixed messages - Northrup won't fund us, Northrup will fund us, nothing's guaranteed, don't know when...
School districts are getting very major budget cuts this year and can't help.
TRW always said they wouldn't fund us if there was another partner. It was a dilemma. Cuz our team was on it's way to tripling in numbers, year round since spring 2002, expenses much more, it promised to be our biggest year ever, but they'd said we couldn't get any other partner, and wouldn't get more than $20,000.
Last year Raytheon had a meeting with community, and engineers at the meeting said they had lots of money to give, and wouldn't care if there was another partner for the team. However they turned us down.
Since then hooked up with the Raytheon engineer who said they had money to give, Raytheon just gave our school's ROTC $50,000, and he's working on getting us funds, but he and us expected that to be done already, and no sign of it yet.
Parent's Boeing turned us down. Then we hooked up with president of LA Society of Engineers who told us that division was out of money, but there are 2 other divisions who have money and we should apply there.
Our team attended Chatsworth fundraising class and got motivated to paraphrase their fundraising letter. A sponsor printed the 1000 black and white copies, a sponsor provided the paper to our ROTC so they could print our 1000 color copies, the local district's paper supplier gave us 1000 large envelopes, and 1000 business size envelopes for this fundraising effort.
fundraising letter
The kids haven't even received the packets yet, but they're suddenly motivated. Parents companies are offering to sponsor (don't know how much yet) and kids have lists of people to approach.
Our regular open houses and other stuff regularly in the paper have drawn in a retired Raytheon electronics engineer, a local manufacturing engineer who says we have use of their machine shop and he can get tools and stuff, a local electronics engineer who owns his own company, and a few other candidates who are going to show up for kickoff.
Volunteer Match got us a handful of interesting offers, but none of them panned out. I'd go ahead and register there tho. Some day something might pan out for us thru there.
I just learned last year's teacher, who's used to only a six week program, will be returning, and our 2001 championship teacher is returning for the six weeks - guess he's heard all we've got going on.
Our usual tshirt provider and money donator sold his company, and I haven't been able to reach anyone in Kiwanis, where he was a member and got us the money. Just got Kiwanis president's phone number. She told our mentor that Kiwanis doesn't fund this kind of stuff. Wha?!? I'll be calling her nicely asking for even MORE money cuz our team's grown so much.
All while kickoff is approaching....Geez!!! The roller coaster ride's going to hit very high gear for weeks.