Quote:
Originally posted by Aidan F. Browne
Let's say you are the CEO of the ACME Corporation, a multi-billion dollar company. Your company does lots and lots of good charity work all over the place, including sponsoring a few FIRST teams.
You attended the 2003 Championship and really got hooked on the program.... you think its the best thing you have ever seen for motivating the youth of America.
You decide that you want to do something special to support FIRST.... you decide that you want to spend $250K a year for the next five years... but you want to find a really unique way to support FIRST that no one has thought of yet...
What do you do with the money?
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My suggestion-
you take $50k and use it to pay for the registrations for 10 FIRST teams on a 50/50 sponsorship basis. I would also use $50K for bonuses to reward the employees of my company who dovote the endless hours to the kids in the program in the name of corporate goodwill and pride. The remaining $150k would be formed into an "interest bearing" trust that generates sponsorship money from then out.
The next year the second $250K plus interest is divided in similar fashion with a $5K sponsorship grant offered to as many teams as possible and the remaining principal banked to continue growth of the fund. A provision would be made to existing teams in the program to increase their sponsorship based on their growth and initiative. As the years pass the principal total would grow as well as the # of teams from the parent company.
The ideal case is a perpetuating fund where there is a consistent set of sponsorship positions and consistent growth over the years. All involved teams would always have a source of funding and not be cut loose after a few years
Of course throughout all this, as a CEO of a major company, I would be hob nobbing with the other CEOs challenging them to support my fund in the same fashion and challenging their teams to compete against mine.
WC
(aside- the "if I won the lottery dream" of my good friend Paul K. is to build a FIRST stadium available to all of us for our events and for rent to those basketball and hockey teams to use when we aren't busy with it. I like the idea. Got the priorities straight. he he)