[tsaksa]

Very well put. And congratulations on doing so well with what you had to work with. Rather than being the object of scorn these other students should see you as a source if inspiration and information on how to achieve without a lot of resources. From what I have seen so far this year, I believe that most teams in our region have difficulty raising much more than about $4000 in most years, so learning how to make that money go as far as possible is really important.

But I have been struggling with a different aspect of the same problem. Our team has had mixed luck over the years both with funding, numbers of mentors and students, and support from the school. Right now we are really struggling as many teams are due to a loss of financial support. The students go to the regionals and sometimes fail to see how many teams are in the same boat. What they do see are the power house teams with scores of mentors, a fancy robot and pit, perhaps even their own trailer to hall all of their stuff around. They go to the pits of these teams and pick up brochures and business plans and they say this is what our team needs to do.

It is really great that there are teams like that out there, and I am glad that so many of them are so willing to share information and advice. However, it it is not always useful for our students to get too focused on what those power house teams are doing. Most teams will never have even one large sponsor. The math just does not work out. If we are to ever reach Dean's goal of a team in every high school it cant. There simply are not enough large companies or enough grant money out there for all of them to compete at that level.

So where does that leave us. Many teams will probably not know from year to year where the money will come from to pay for even one regional. But that is no reason obsess over getting some huge sponsor. Sure, try for the grants and do whatever you can to raise money, but never begrudge teams that have more funds. What we need to do is to always strive to do the best we can with whatever we have available. After all, it is the learning and experience that is most important. Hopefully one day our team will be as successful as yours in leveraging what we have. If that day comes, I hope we have found a way to leave the sort of sentiment your team has seen a long way behind us.