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Unread 17-05-2008, 18:06
Devon27 Devon27 is offline
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FRC #0027 (Team Rush)
Team Role: Alumni
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Clarkston
Posts: 29
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Re: Need New Fundraising Ideas!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19 View Post
Fund raising is one of the best ways to impact the community. People are always willing to pay to be inspired or taught, even entertained.

We do 3 separate weeks of FLL camps in the summer to teach kids prior to the upcoming FLL season, this has not only brought in about 2 or 3 thousand a year but also has TRIPLED the amount of FLL teams in our area. We provide an advanced camp for students as well which assures that they'll come back and learn more.

Another thing we've found (on a slightly unrelated note), if we do these things while students are young they grow up and join the team. I'm an example of this. RUSH did FLL camps when I was in 4th grade I did it, I conned my mom into getting the school to start an FLL team, and grew up to join FRC. So this truly does wonders for not only fund raising but also recruiting.

There is also our Parent's Night out. This is basically an activity night for kids at a local middle school. We have plenty of things to do, and of course food for sale (because kids love food, and we love having $ to build a robot). Every 10 year old is ridiculously excited to see robots, so we like to show it off. This takes quite a bit of planning, and is a decent amount of work, but they make us about $1000 each.

In the past we did a garage sale of stuff (mostly junk) we got donated from the community. It, again, was a lot of work organization wise, but in the end was successful. We found the key was advertising.

Selling stuff works well and all, but it is probably not as profitable as community events, and for some students is more of a commitment than 3 hours on a Saturday.

I'll post more if I think of them and/or remember to come back to the thread, I know we've done other things, but it's 2 am...
We also do a Pig Contest, each student gets a plastic piggy bank and must carry it around with them 24-7 until they get the minimum dollar amount ($25). Students are also supposed to decorate their pigs or give them a theme and at the openhouse, family, friends, sponsors, teachers, or students can put money in the pigs to vote for the best decorated or themed pig. That student wins an award and we also have a light-weigt and heavy-weight contest so the student with the most money and least weight ratio and the student with the most money and most weight ratio win too.

Another fun and pretty easy fundraiser we did this year was a bowling fundraiser. Each student was required to sell at least 5 tickets ($15/ticket) to family, friends, or themselves for the event and the ticket included pizza, salad, pop, cake, 2 games of bowling, and their stub was put into a drawing for a flat screen tv. Also, at the bowling alley, we had a 50-50 raffle and a door prize raffle where people would buy tickets to try to win various prizes that were donated by team members or local businesses. This in my opinion was the best fundraiser we have done, it brought in 3 times the amount as our parents-night-out usually does and seemed quite a bit easier too.
__________________
Devon -- Team RUSH 27

2009
Kettering District Event Entrepreneurship Award, Lansing District Event Chairmans Award, Michigan Chamionship Chairmans Award
2008
Detroit Regional Finalist, Detroit Regional Chairmans Award, Great Lakes Regional Motorola Quality Award, Championship Motorola Quality Award
2007
Detroit Regional Entrepreneurship Award, West Michigan Regional Chairmans Award, West Michigan Regional Entrepreneurship Award

RIP John Lafata--Forever 27
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