We are in the same situation each year. Our school pays for the registration fee, one rigional and the rest we raise our selves most of the time. what we do is each student is asked to go out into the community to buissness and ask them top sponser us. wee are able to go to like 6 tons though because we are a regional school but even going to one town could bring in a lot of doagh. what we did is made up some sponser forms and brochures to hand out. i alone raise over 1500 and a few other people raised a lot too. we're a really small team like 10 students and 5 mentors.
I know this sort of thing happened to team 1784 last year when they got highest seeded rookie at hartford and in the three weeks they had they raised all of the 5000 or so dollars they needed to go. i think they assighned each person on the team a street to go down and talk to every buisness on that street. there are a lot of ways to raise money. like someone else said do a car wash, or bake sale. even if you only get 25 or 50 bucks it all adds up really fast.
good luck
