HELP!! Need $5000 for registration fee and we dont have any sponsors!

[Hailfire]

Go to Sam's Club or one of those kinds of clubs and get large packages of chips, candy, etc. Then, sell them at your school for about $0.50 or $0.75 a piece. You'll probably make a profit. Not much, but some. Hope that helps.

[MattK]

Hi-Jack a segway and sell it on ebay. Come to manch-vegas, they are all over the place!

[Jon K.]

Originally posted by sanddrag
How much has anyone seriously gotten from a robot demo? Also, where did you do it and what did you charge?

RAGE has done two demos for two different Cub Scout troops. We got $100 each time and all we did was talk about the bot and FIRST for a little bit and then drive the robot and let the kids watch and ask questions later. Pretty much the kids were not allowed to touch the robot but they asked some pretty good questions about the parts. So for about 4 hours worth of doing stuff we made $100. And since this year team members that help with fundraising will get there fair share contributed to their traveling costs or whatever, no one is getting a free ride so to speak. Also to MattK, stop talking about hi-jacking segways no one wants it on these boards so stop already. We have had enough of you garbage posts about Segways. No one really cares anymore So STOP!!!!

[Elgin Clock]

Originally posted by Mongoose
We tried selling candy last year. It didn't quite work out, and now we have a couple large boxes of lollipops lying in our storage room. We gave them away by the handful one night, but they're still there. I also heard another team got a load of money just from going to a fair and charging $1/minute for people to drive their robot around.

Yeah we did that, It was actually $1 for about three minutes. It was mostly little kids (4-9) that came up to drive it but a few adults as well. We need to come up with a kill switch though for next year, or enclose the area around the "robot test drive" area. We had a few people who were hit mostly by accident and the people who were bumped into were good about the situation but there are always the rowdy ones, more than likely the older kids (13-15) who were driving who drove into people for kicks. Darn Punks!!!! Oh and if you have other compttions you are gong to later in the year, make sure you have time to fixe something if it goes wrong. I, yes I said "I", broke one of our drill motor transmissions during one of these test drives. I'm not allowed to drive the robot anymore!! LOL

Also one of the advisors for the team has basically a candy shop in his closet at school. We sell it all!!!

[Gadget470]

moreso than just a kill switch, have someone nearby the perimeter of your No-Stand-Zone.

247, 469, and one other team did a 2-day demo for the opening of the Detroit Science Center, this was two years ago w/ the big balls.

While a kid, (under 13) was driving around and a member of 469 was tossing the ball to the bot so the kid could 'catch' it, it was in grasp then the kid started moving around with the bot.

It became topheavy over a group of 5-8 year olds who assumed the robot was trying to hand them the ball when in fact it was tipping over on top of them.

Luckily, someone on 469 that was standing near the kids caught the robot saving a catastrophe.


So basically, if you are going to be showing off your bot, and allowing inexperienced drivers of any age, consider worst-case scenario's and prevent them

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally posted by Hailfire
Go to Sam's Club or one of those kinds of clubs and get large packages of chips, candy, etc. Then, sell them at your school for about $0.50 or $0.75 a piece. You'll probably make a profit. Not much, but some. Hope that helps.

Actually, we do something like that. We help out with the regional FLL tournament and host the state tournament. At each of these events, our team sells concessions. We sell soda, milk, coffee, lemonade, pizza, hot dogs, chips, and cookies. We sell them at a reasonable price ($0.50 for a soda, $0.50 for a bag of chips, etc.) - but we make a really good profit.

We also sell candybars to raise money. We buy them for $0.50/bar and sell them for $1. It actually does raise a fair amount of money.

This past year, we sold giant Pixie Stix at our city's Octoberfest. We bought the candy for $150 (total) ... but by the time we are done selling them, we will have made $800 profit. It's a pretty good deal.

As far as corporate sponsors go, we have two main ones: Plexus Corp and the Appleton Area School District (AASD). The AASD gives us a really nice grant to keep the program going, and Plexus picks up the cost of our spare parts and such. It's a really nice deal. Kimberly Clark also sends a few of their engineers over to help. They donate welding equipment to the school, which we use.

Our team also has a lot of smaller sponsors - but we appreciate them as much as our main sponsors! These "smaller" sponsors donate food, materials and equipment to our team. Without them, we would have problems.

Every year, after Nationals, Our team has a sponsor's banquet. We invite all of the head people who's comapnies sponsor us to the dinner. We recognize them, and hand out plaques with the company's name, the year and a picture of our team at one of the competitions we attended that past season. Many of our sponsors have the plaques hanging in their lobbies, so a lot of people see these!

Our team also does a fair amount of demonstrations around the city. We don't get any money for doing these demos, but we have picked up a few sponsors by doing so. I think our piggest sponsor pick-up is at Octoberfest. Thies year, a guy from Bimba noticed us and said he can give us almost anything (pneumatics-wise) for free! All we have to do is ask. So even though we don't get money *directly* for doing these demos, many times it pays off in the long run!

One new thing we are trying this year:

Each team member is responsible for fundraising half of his/her cost to go to a competition. Example: if a competition is going to cost a student $50 to attend, they must raise at least $25 to be able to go. This just encourages fundraising for students.

Does your team pay for students to go to competitions, or do they pay for the costs themselves? If the team pays now, you might want tot hink about making the students pay (or fundraise!) to go. That will cut back a *little* on your team's costs.

I hope this helps!!

- Katie

[Jnadke]

Last year we tried selling pointsettas but that didn't bring in a whole lot of profit... Don't quote me on that but not very many people sold their share. A lot of people were just too lazy.

One thing we used to do for Boy Scouts was selling wreaths. We used to raise tons of money selling those. If you can find a good wreath company, and go door-to-door (or have your parents bring the forms to work)... you'll sell lots of those for the holiday season. Set up multiple times that people can have theirs delivered (like December 2 and December 20, or something like that). Some people bought 2 wreaths so they can have a fresh one for christmas. Usually we sold them for $12-$20 depending on the size of wreath the customer bought (and how much cost was).

The good thing about this sale, is that you can keep your customer list from previous years. Then, the next year you can call everyone back up and see if they are interested in buying them again. You customers increase every year, and so do your profits!

[OneAngryDaisy]

Raffles are also a good way to earn money- raffle off something kids really want like a xbox and you'll make a ton

Another really really good way to make money is to host a mini-competition. We're having our third annual "Ramp Riot" this coming saturday.. I know you guys probably can't do this since you don't even have a robot- jus throwing my part in the pot

I've noticed some other teams with about twenty or thirty sponsors- you could go around to every local business and tell tehn you'd put their name on your shirt and the robot, etc

Another idea- if you have a few robots sell one of them.. you could fool someone in paying a few thousand $ for it...

[sanddrag]

Sell a robot? Never.

We just had a carwash on a cool, partly cloudy day and made $680 - $35 for water. We had about 15 people working. We presold tickets begining 4 days in advance and a car/truck/suv wash was $5. Parents donated soap, towels, sponges, etc. We even got Papa John's to HIGHLY discount some pizza for us for lunch. We're talkin' like 2 bucks for a large.

Very nice.

<edit> And oh yeah, at my school, it is illegal to hold any form of a raffle. So you might want to check on that first. </edit>

[OneAngryDaisy]

illegal? what?- here almost every athletic team or club has a raffle... Is there a specific reason they have been banned at your school?

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by OneAngryDaisy
illegal? what?- here almost every athletic team or club has a raffle... Is there a specific reason they have been banned at your school?

If I remember correctly, when ChiefDelphi raffled off miscellaneous large electronic items (laptop, tv, vcr, dvd, etc) at the CDI's in the past, they had to get a state license to do so. I think.

[Katie Reynolds]

Yeah, I know we're not allowed to hold a raffle without special permission from someone.

Not too sure on the details though :-\

- Katie

[Ricky Q.]

Originally posted by Katie Reynolds
Yeah, I know we're not allowed to hold a raffle without special permission from someone.

Not too sure on the details though :-\

- Katie

In Wisconsin at least you have to get a liscence from some state agency and put the Lic. # on all the tickets you sell, we did a PS2 and TV raffle last year and made around $2500.

Different for this year is that our district (OASD) is our biggest sponsor, giving us $6000....Quest has dropped their money support to $2500, and our 3 or 4 other big sponsors give us $1000. We raise the rest with candy bars (lots and lots and lots of candy bars), pizza sales, car wash, bake sale, and just plain out donations. Team members get their regional trips paid for (at least 1, we aren't sure how it will work out with going to 2 regionals this year) and the members that goto nationals usually end up paying about half, and the other half comes from the team.

[Shana]

Another idea for fundraising would be a silent auction. My team used to do it, we made a coulple thousand last year. What you need to do is send your team members out with general letters asking companies for a donation of their goods or services. You then can make it into either a dinner or dessert buffet, we prefered the last one, and charge people for coming in. It was a great way to make money and fun You just have to make sure your team is willing to put in all the work that goes into it.

~SHANA~
P.S. To make it more cost efficent we had the students bring dessert so that we had no out of pocket cost.