Quote:
Originally Posted by KenWittlief
I disagree - once you have a local regional you can have a team for less than $10,000 a year
for a business that is not a lot of money. Im sure there are far more businesses in any given area than there are highschools.
If not then you really NEED FIRST in your area! :^)
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Actually $10,000 is a lot of money. Quite a lot of money. Our team has spent many long hard months doing car washes, light bulb sales at a variety of venues, other fund raising events, restaurant fund raisers, etc. We have also had the students out tracking down and following up on just about any source for donations, grants, etc. The students and adult volunteers are worn out worn out from all the fund raising and yet at this point we only have approximately $5000 raised for the year. That is enough for registration at one event, but nothing else. No spare parts, no supplies, no tools, no extras of any kind.
Our fund raising efforts are ongoing, but at this point we will probably not be working with much more. There was a time when we got some financial support from the school district, and that made things easier. But at this point we are lucky to have our school supply some space for meetings. We also used to get more cooperate sponsorship, but most local companies have dropped all support and it takes a lot of work to raise even $5000 if most of your corporate donations are less than $100. I wish we were a town with have a JC Penny or other company that supports FIRST, but for now we need to just chase as many small donations as we can. The economy is tight and in some areas there is just not a lot of money available.
Still, I would hate to see our team decide to merge with another local high school. I know if that happened many of the students would just have no way of making it to meetings on a regular basis and would drop out of the program. I know there are companies that really understand FIRST and are willing to make a significant contribution. There are also locations where fund raising events can solicit a more significant response. But please do not assume these opportunities exist for most of the teams out there.