I'm more or less throwing out random thoughts pertaining to the questions you asked, sorry for disorganization.
744 was more or less on the verge of collapse between the 2008 and 2009 seasons. Financial and mentor support was alright, but there were going to be ~3 students left on the team after the seniors graduated. Those students sat down and and made a plan to recruit people. By far the most beneficial thing they did was getting a class period for robotics. It let people experience the team without having to commit a lot of after-school time, in addition to getting elective credit. Another thing they did was get their friends involved by saying, "We go on the most fun trips!" Next season there was ~15-20 students on the team. Fast-forward to this year, the school added a special STEM certificate if you graduate with the correct classes, and we had a record 34 students or about 10% of the student body!
Another thing to help get people excited is to do a trip early in the school year and make the emphasis on having fun. There's at least one off-season in Florida next fall, Panther Prowl. Info found here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=128591
The addition of a class also helped financially. Every year the students get a project to send out the team's sponsor letter to x number of people. Family, friends, businesses, etc. It's a graded assignment, so lots of people get contacted. Keep in mind though that this is an unreliable method, returning different results every year.
There is a fundraising toolkit posted by FIRST, which can be found here:
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...aising-toolkit
From our experience, the best fundraising you can do though is to find lasting partnerships in the community. Chances are someone on your team or in your school knows someone who knows someone who works with a company/business that would be willing to support your team. Fundraising is great and important, but in order to be sustainable, you'll want several partnerships with sponsors, and from our experience, most of those have come from personal contacts.
If you have the resources, you could also do mini-projects during the fall to help prepare for build season, get people working on tools, get people used to working in teams, etc. If you don't have the resources, work on getting them so in future years you can do these projects. Regardless, you can train programmers using this years robot.
Lastly, don't get overwhelmed! If it seems like a lot, break things down into smaller bits. You're clearly of to a great start, with a well deserved RAS to prove it! If your teams finds itself in a serious jam come fall, contact the regional director (for South Florida I believe it's Sandra Contreras). This person is there to help the teams and will do what they can to ensure a team doesn't fall apart!
And actually, I almost forgot. Being a college student involved with a team (to a small degree), I want to caution: Be careful being a mentor in college. Everyone takes college differently, and it's ultimately up to you to find what is best for you, but a lot of people can't handle mentoring while in college. The transition from student to mentor is also a tricky thing to navigate. If you search, you'll find plenty of threads on here about this subject that I suggest you read before making the decision to mentor.
tl;dr A lengthy question deserves a lengthy response, right?
