[Steven Smith]

Hate to give you more of an assignment than an answer, but the best starting point isn't to pick a number to shoot for... it's to build a budget for what your team needs and wants.

If the majority of your fundraising is small donations from individual donors (set up a booth type thing)... they probably won't care as much what your financial situation is. However, having your budget paperwork in order and being able to communicate clearly what you intend to spend the donation on will go a long way when approaching sponsors.

A few good starting points for "needs" would be enough money to attend a single regional (with reasonable assumptions on grant money you are likely to get), enough budget on the robot materials to not overly limit your design potential by lack of funds, and shop consumables. Your "wants" you can prioritize as a team, including additional regionals or a contingency for championships, spirit items, food for the team, workshop upgrades, pit upgrades, etc. Many of those things are sensitive to the team size as well.

To give you a number though (complete opinion, YMMV), $10K is probably a good target for a new(ish) team of 10-20 students to make sure they are surviving... $15K-$20K gets thing to be a bit more comfortable... and if you're targeting $25K+, make sure you've got a solid plan for how to spend your money wisely... versus just consuming $$$. As nice as it might be to have a $50K+ year, you don't want to follow that with a $10K year... and after buying a $40K mill because all the cool teams have one, you can't afford to go to champs.