[xitaqua]

Hello All,

I hope this can help :

It is not about the money, it is about the mentor.

Most mentors work at companies, if a company is willing to give some money to the team it will be more likely to do so because one of it's employees is involved with FIRST.

Let the mentor take the initiative in talking to the company about funding, this is specially true to big corporation, just because a company has a "community relations" person does not mean that it will be easy to get funded, it needs to be part of the company corporate strategy. If a company has 10 sites, and one site a team got money, the other site will probably want to be able to give money. So that means the enterprise itself needs to budget that money, and it will not be "small change", it make take a while, but if nothing else you have a mentor that is involved with the team.

Develop a strategy to attract and keep mentors, look at parents, neighboors, engineers that goes to your place of worship and etc...etc.....

Also keep your "sponsors" diverse, it is much better to get a bunch of small donations than a big one. I seem so many teams folding because of this single issue. The keyword : Involvement - Participation.

Have an open house and invite the folks in the community to tour your facilities, send invitation to Chamber of Commerce members..etc...etc...


Cheers,
Marcos.