I would say become good friends with your local RadioShack, but they no longer will continue to sell Vex merchandise, bah. So, if IFI recruits a new retail outlet for Vex, become good friends with your local branch. Get a discount if possible (many stores offer educational discounts to organizations run by schools as well, be use to take advantage of those as well). Other local organizations can provide monetary funding is always helpful, but other contributions can help to. A local restaraunt may provide coupons or catering to your team, a local Kinko's or other copying place may allow free/discounted printing and copying (great for producing advertisment material for at the competitions, community outreach, etc.), or plenty of other things.
While the bare minimum hardware recquired is only 1 Vex starter kit, we have found that you will need much more to build a competitive robot. In the 2 years we have competed, we used 8 motors in 2005, and 7 this year. This year, we also used about 2 hardware kits worth of metal, a tread kit, a chain and sproket kit, 2 additional all purpose wheels (beyond the 2 issued in the Starter kit), and a programming kit, 2 vexlabs rubber bands, and vexlab grip treads. We also found that having a hacksaw, dremel, vice, plenty more allen wrenches, wire cutters, pliers, and hammer were useful for when we had to modify parts (although, it is possible to build a vex bot with limited or no modification to stock pieces,
like this bot (which only had a couple bends, done by hand ). For when producing the final product (we'd recommend at least some prototyping of components, particularly any actuated joins and sensor mountings), use loc-tite (we used purple) and/or the vex nylon lock nuts. The crown nuts have been known to fall off during the intense competitions.
I do not know of any official vex workshops in your area, but there are vex camps in New Hampshire, and run by a few FRC and FVC teams around the country designed for kids. I'm also positive that you can find a mentor team to help you with any problems you do encounter, and can also provide various tricks they learned to help them with their season, from generic design procedures, to outreach, right down to how to fasten a nut.
I hope that helps, and if you have any other questions, feel free to contact me.