Here at Georgia Tech, we are preparing the new Georgia rookie teams for the season and have put a lot of good information on our website. We had our Rookie training session last week, the presentation for that is also on the website. Please feel free to take a look at it at
www.robojackets.org.
You would probably want to raise at least $2000 for robot building as well as travel money for the team. Teams also usually have some kind of uniform (t-shirts, etc) and have buttons to give away at the competition. These are things you can work on now, or after the robot is built. A rookie robot can be very competitive, just try to keep your design simple come January. Don't try to do everything and you'll be fine. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Good luck!