Team 5700 Help us!

[nicknickmak]

Team 5700: SOTA Cyberdragons is in desperate need of help. We are from Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. We've been persistently trying to raise funds but nothing is working (enough). We currently only have about 300 dollars, and its already December. Jim Beck (our regional director) doesn't respond to our emails, potential sponsors freeze their shoulders, and we're running out of time. Please help us!
gofund.me/sotacyberdragons
Team5700.org
https://www.facebook.com/SOTACyberdragons
Sincerely,
Nick Mak
Founder

[nfhammes]

What are you trying? Have you looked into the Fundraising Toolkit? There's a lot of awesome ideas in there.

You also have a cool Assistant RD, a Senior Mentor, and some nearby teams worth reaching out to directly as well. Team 4159 is especially worth noting, since they're super close to you.

And do you mean "We just paid for our event and have $300 in the bank" or "We have $300 in the bank and an event to pay for"? If you're in the prior situation, you can probably go after a lot of in-kind donations, prototype only the most important mechanisms, and still probably get by. Otherwise, going after every grant and tech company the bay area has to offer is your best hope; finding something strong about your team (your rookie potential) to aggressively promote, and throw everything at the wall, that's probably your only shot.

[Whippet]

This thread contains a boatload of useful tips without which my team would not have continued to exist today. You still have a month to gather funds, assuming that you have already received an extension to the fundraising deadline. That being said, my tips for your specific situation are as follows:

1. Reach out to local banks or credit unions to get a loan. This will allow you to register and compete without needing to raise all the money at once. Your regional director may be able to help with this through your regional FIRST orginazation.
2. Prepare a sponsor packet full of information about your team, what you do, and the benefits of sponsoring your team. Mail this out to every business you can think of, and then some.
3. Follow up those packet mailings with a phone call. Try to arange for an in-person meeting, as it is far harder for a potential sponsor to turn one down.
4. ENSURE THAT EVERY TEAM MEMBER IS WELL VERSED IN FIRST AND ITS BENEFITS. Ensure that they can answer virtually any question a potential sponsor coult possibly throw at them.

Finally, one thing stood out to me from your GoFundMe page was your video. I understand your desire to express your enthusiasm for the program, but the f-bomb can be a huge turn-off to many sponsors. I would edit the video so that the offending word is no longer in it, or use one of the amazing promotional videos produced by FIRST. They are a very great start for little effort on your part.

If you're having trouble getting sponsors to even respond, keep reaching out to them through as many methods as possible. If that doesn't work, keep doing it. Thay can only ignore you for so long.

EDIT: If you would like to reach out to me personally, please feel free to send me a PM by clicking on my user name or email me at lhtrueba@yahoo.com . I have been through this situation last year and I want to help your team compete as much as I possibly can.

[Monochron]

Absolutely follow the other suggestions people have posted, they are very good. Also, can you tell us more about what you have done so far to raise funds? That way we can stick to improving those efforts or starting new ones.


I'll include a recommendation to do something that my team has done for the past years that I think would really benefit a teams like yours desperate for funding.
We assign each and every student on the team 2 - 3 local business in the area that they are required to visit in person and give a short presentation about our team's needs to the manager / owner. Business like auto repair shops, AC companies, hardware stores, machine shops, etc. We spend a meeting or two training everyone in depth about the points they need to talk about. We send them with this script to help guide them if they are not great at presenting. We have them give the manager a copy of our Sponsor Packet (made by a mentor and student Sept. 2013) and our Flyer (made around the same time) to keep. Most people think this is a ridiculous idea when they hear it, but it really saved our team last year as it brought in over $1,500. The setup for it can be done by one person, and then your team members fan out to work on doing the actual requests independently, freeing up team leadership to pursue other opportunities.

The idea is really that you have plenty of students on the team with plenty of time that they aren't spending in actual robotics meetings. Why not put that time to use fundraising and get them to canvas local businesses. There are all sorts of other benefits to this like building community support and awareness and teaching your students presentation skills, but as your main goal is funding I can tell you that it can absolutely work. We have equal success in rural, urban, and suburban areas.

Your team may initially balk at the idea of having to pound the pavement to make the team work, but if they are really as excited as they seem in that video, you can probably convince them.

[BenDSterling]

At this point, getting sponsors will be hard. Look at the other posts in this thread, they all give great information. The easiest sponsors to get are small local businesses. Find a local t-shirt printing place to print your t-shirts for you, a local machine shop to let you use thier tools, etc. Sponsors are much more likely to give you stuff rather than money. Tell potential sponsors EXACTLY what you need the money for. Tell them the urgency of how you need the money. You are much more likely to get money by saying we need $X to register for this season so that we can comepete and build a robot than if you just said we need $X.
Also, do not do this over the phone. Either send them a letter for go in person. Schedule a meeting over email and then go and talk with them in person.
Good luck!!