[laurenlacy]

In my experience you're going to want nothing more than one sided, single spaced. Anything beyond that and you can tend to lose interest. We had two separate letters, one for returning sponsors and one for new sponsors. For the returning sponsors we thanked them for their aid the previous year, summarized our accomplishments in the previous year, informed them of our financial need, reiterated the goals of our program, and invited them to meet with us and check out our website.

The new sponsor letter was similar, but didn't include the thanking for the previous year and had a bit more about what FIRST is all about and what donating to us would accomplish for them. With each we included a sponsorship level sheet, which had our sponsorship levels and what came with each level, such as prominent logo placing on our robot and shirts for example. We also had different sponsorship levels for in-kind vs monetary donations.

In response to Carol, our experience was that those who we followed up with phone calls tended to be more likely to donate. In this age of digital and print communication, making a personal connection is still a big deal. We visited and presented to all of our $5000 plus sponsors (not including grants) and even to some of the smaller ones. Use the letter as a jumping off point, and as the first place where you can introduce yourselves professionally.