Brandon, I think this link is worth mentioning here. Jenny Beatty posted it in another thread. NEMO isn't just another 4 letter acronym, it really helps. Many good bullet points from NEMO's site regarding fundraising are listed in the slide set
Branding, Publicity and Fundraising by Sharlene Brown and Bill Duncan. My particularly favorite slide is the tiered approach via sponsorship levels, which also show what a sponsor can expect in return.
http://www.mdfirst.org/programs/firs...ining-day.html
Hope this helps you as much as it's helped us. FRC teams are really like small businesses (small NPO's actually) with few options to generate income -- yet we can't dismiss what's available to us because the opportunities are enough to get us through.
I think part of the frustration is that the bar to FRC entry is exceptionally high relative to the incomes of many communities.