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Originally Posted by kyle1997
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... How do your teams fundraise?
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Disclaimer: I don't have any great fundraising advice because my direct answer to your question is they don't. High school aged students do fundraising for their programs, but I very rarely have the younger kids fundraise. I haven't found that the process benefits the young kids much, it's stressful and time consuming for them and turns some kids off before they even start, it's stressful and time consuming for parents who are already bombarded by requests to fundraise, it's stressful and time consuming for me, and they have plenty of time in high school to learn to fundraise once they know what the program is about. I make sure they have all of the resources they need (kits, registration fee, shirts, software, etc.) with funds from grants that I apply for or parent funded pay-to-play fees, and then if they want something extra (special parts, cool team gear, promo items) they fundraise that smaller amount. When I have families with multiple children or families on free or reduced lunch I subsidize the cost for them out of revenues I get from day camp.
Fundraising in FLL is a very different beast than FRC for two key reasons. The first (and obvious) is that the students are younger. The second is that you do not have three months of the school year to fundraise before the season starts as FLL kicks off within weeks of the start of the school year (or in some areas, the same week school starts).
Additionally, before you get started fundraising, you need to do some groundwork with regards to planning and budgeting. How much money are you going to need and when will you need it by? And before you can do that, you need to determine program dynamics such as number of students per team and your expected attrition rates. For the sake of simplicity I made a spreadsheet assuming 8 students per team (which is the maximum I run) and zero attrition (all 58 students will complete the season) which works out to 8 teams. The spreadsheet is attached and works out to approximately $7,000 required. This assumes that as a new program you don't have any equipment and thus need to purchase kits. It does not include computers, supplies to build tables, shipping and handling, sales tax, promotional items for events, any more than one event per team, or any budget for project supplies. If any of these are erroneous assumptions you can adjust as needed for your program. Though it does add up to a significant amount when you are organizing a large cluster of teams, the good news is that the per student total is more manageable than FRC. Anyway, basic budgeting done.
Now we can move on to addressing the timing and age issues. As timing is quite the logistical hurdle, I'll start with that. Of the $7K total, approximately $6K of that is required before the students actually start meeting to secure team registrations, robot kits, software, and field set up kits. Taking into account the time required for shipping and handling, it would probably be wise to have equipment ordered by early August (depending on when school starts in your area). August 1st is a reasonable fundraising deadline (September 1st is the latest I would be comfortable with, your expectations may vary).
The key take away here is that if students will be involved in fundraising, they must be engaged over the summer months. Edited to Add: They can fundraise over the course of the fall if the school is willing to front money for purchasing equipment and team registrations, but that may backfire on you if fundraising doesn't come through.
As far as age appropriate expectations, boy scouts and girl scouts is a good example of what's reasonable for younger students (under age 13 or so). Note that although the students do the actual "boots on the ground" work 1) there is always at least one adult present and 2) the program is very solidly set up for them and is organized well in advance with products, marketing materials, ordering forms, and shipping and storage of product. Also, the kids have very little actual selling that they need to do. Everybody already knows why girl scout cookies are so great. A precocious youth with salesmanship skills will do amazing, but even a young shy youth can be successful simply by standing at a booth in a uniform and looking cute. In my experience, there isn't an equivalent of this in FIRST. The lightbulbs are offered, but they aren't a well known product by the general public and LED lightbulbs are available in stores for the same price, or less, than what a team can charge for each bulb. In general, fundraising with this age group is very parent/mentor/adult driven. Keeping that in mind, here's a few ideas you could try...
1) Do the same cold calling of companies you do with FRC, but ask the parent to do the call with their student present. Provide all the marketing materials and do a parent/student training session beforehand. Some parents may be willing to ask their place of employment.
2) Have your FRC team members host a week of summer camp for K-8. Grades 5-8 can do FLL training activities and K-4 can do LEGO club type activities. $100 for a one week half day camp is a good base line, adjust up or down depending on the socioeconomic demographics of your area. The catch-22 is that you need equipment to run camp but you are running camp to afford equipment.
3) Most kids can plant flowers by age 10. Consider advertising to the school or community that you will plant flowers for x amount per flower, and be sure to emphasize the point that it's a fundraiser. You may be able to convince home improvement or garden stores to donate flowers, or at least give you a discount. Watch that you don't overwork kids or let them get dehydrated, and be prepared to do some replanting or touch up work if they get tired and start doing sloppy planting. The savvy businessperson would plant annuals so that you can make the money every year.
4) Host a parent's night out. Charge $10-$20 per child for an evening of fun and games while mom and dad can go out for the evening. FRC students can be the games staff while a few teachers/parents/adults are on site for safety reasons.
Hopefully this helps! You may already have all that information under control (in which case thumbs up) but so long as I'm on a roll I figured I'd put it out for anybody else that may stumble across this thread eventually.