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Unread 02-09-2010, 01:01
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Garret Garret is offline
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
AKA: Garret Smalley
FRC #0691 (Hart District Robotics)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Rookie Year: 2008
Location: Goleta, CA (UCSB)
Posts: 203
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Re: Team 975 is sending out an SOS to the FIRST community

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how many sponsors does your team ask, and do you have any recommendations on which ones would most likely work?
My team is asking about 20 sponsors in our first "wave" of fundraising efforts this year. These companies include a lot of medical device companies, rapid prototyping companies, defense contractors, and engineering/robotics companies, manufacturing companies, machine shops, and industrial suppliers; these are the types of companies I would recommend. I have no idea what companies are in the Netherlands but I would suggest you go for all companies that are high-tech and have a large investment in employing skilled engineers. I do not know how I would attempt to "market" (my word for approaching sponsors) in the Netherlands. All I can recommend is trying to "sell" FIRST to them; what I mean by sell is to explain the mission of FIRST and how that mission would help their company and the future generations and so on. Normally here I would emphasize lots of statistics about how far behind the US has fallen in math and science education but in the Netherlands I do not think that would be as great a selling point, as you are way ahead of us in those aspects.
My other suggestion about approaching companies is to go and research whatever companies you are going to approach so that you can change your sales pitch to match the potential sponsor. I really do not feel that I can help much other than what I suggested in my previous post.
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$34,540 is simply too much for us here. So far, every year we've participated we've somehow scrounged up the money. With the majority of us being seniors, the bare min. of around 13k (sorry we haven't calculated everything yet) for flights/hotels/kit of parts combined, we rarely have enough to go on the economy here and buy the parts we need.
$34,540 is a huge amount of money. I only used this number because this is my teams fundraising goal and to make the point to make the numbers more "jagged" as to make it seem more realistic. I understand the issue of having problems fundraising because my team used to have a similar issue because of our lethargic at best attempts to get sponsors. The point of my using the massive number was emphasizing the jagged end not the number itself.
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Our school is secluded from the locals, so small businesses would be reluctant to fund some foreign team.
I do not know what you mean by them being reluctant to fund a foreign team (I am assuming you are refering to your team). In my experience it is important to ask all companies you can. The main issue is whether or not a particular company is worth the effort of trying to obtain sponsorship from it, I mean should your team put a considerable amount of effort into a company with little chance of it paying off. without knowing your situation all I can recommend is going after companies who you think are likely to sponsor first, after you have exhausted all of those options you should go after the other small businesses.
Also if the small businesses are reluctant to sponsor a team because it is not from their area, you should sell your team not as from a particular school but as a team representing a larger area, I do not know how many teams are in the Netherlands but try selling the team as representing the Netherlands.
I hope this helps and makes sense,
Garret
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