[Jon Jack]

Why only talk to large companies/corporations?

Since my team's school is a charter school they get a fraction of the state funding a normal school would get. To make up for this they have to do fundraising of their own just to continue operating. Because the school's fundraising efforts we are not allowed to talk to large or well know companies that have offices in San Diego (Qualcomm, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, WD-40, Northop Grumman and SPAWAR, just to name a few).

So instead of talking to a few large companies, we talk to a bunch of smaller companies that the school thinks won't donate any significant amount of money to the school. This year we talked to smaller machine shops, banks, engineering firms, metal supply companies, restaurants and parents/relatives/friends of the team. In total we raised about $25,000 through grants and sponsorship and had another $2,000-$5,000 in materials and services donated.

One thing I will point out is that many banks have policies where they have to put X amount of money back into the community...