Quote:
Originally Posted by Moon2020
All of the local FIRST students cannot be from well-fed, perfect homes with household incomes above the poverty line. A first-hand story or two on how FIRST has personally changed their outcome in life would be great if the teams can get a meeting with the right person/people.
I'm wondering what the sales pitch is that is turning them off from listening/seeing how FIRST positively impacts the disadvantaged youth in the community and lifts them out of the endless cycle. How and what are the teams/planning committee doing when you approach the hotels/casinos?
Have the LVR Teams/planning committee sent disadvantaged current students and FIRST alumni from various teams set up meetings to give the sales pitch(s) to the casino/hotel donation decision makers on how FIRST has helped them break the cycle of homelessness/poverty/abuse/etc. or are there just flyers that are handed out to the business office soliciting for money? Are there FIRST Teams from the most economically disadvantaged areas represented in statistics/data on a one-sheet double-sided color flyer that the business office can keep and is it making it to the right person? How many alumni/parents are employed by the casinos/hotels? Is that included on the flyer? Is it stated that LV is about to lose this great Regional and its teams due to lack of sponsors? Loss of the event also impacts hotel room sales and spending in the local area.
BTW, We have lost around 72 teams since 2003 and currently have 68. Some are due to lack of funding, others are due to lack of mentors. Sustainability vs. growth.
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Believe me, we have had some success reaching the "right" people in person, and have had opportunity to expose them to the "right kids" with the "right stories" and left them with professionally produced fliers over the years and when given the courtesy of an explanation for their decision we have been told that the given hotel/casino would be staying with the charity they have been helping for years prior to our inception and that the cause they were staying with served more people who had greater needs than those associated with our regional.
We have even had some success getting key personnel to visit the event and still been unsuccessful. Since the move to terminate our regional is recent we haven't included a statement we are about to lose the regional (we will add that now of course). Regarding economic benefits for hotels related to filling of hotel rooms by event visitors, numerous times we have been told by charity decision makers that their hotels prefer a demographic that includes mostly gamblers, not underage kids (and they can afford to overlook room loss given we have the highest average hotel room occupancy in the US). This doesn't mean we don't keep trying however.