Best sponsors

Hey teams! I'm starting early on getting ideas for next year's sponsor hunt. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to fill this our for your team. I'm sure many other teams will find this useful, too. Thanks!

1.Who do you have sponsor you?
2.Where are they located?
3.What do they do (What dies the company normally do)?
4.Are they reliable?
5.Do they give you money, services, free stuff?
6.Are they good at the services they do, if any?
7.Who is your best sponsor?
8.How do you get people to sponsor you?

[Alex Dinsmoor]

1.Who do you have sponsor you?

Currently our sponsors are General Motors Research and Development, AVL, and Rochester High School.

2.Where are they located?

GM R&D is located in Warren, MI, AVL in South East Michigan (not sure exactly what city), and Rochester High School in Rochester Hills, MI.

3.What do they do?

GM R&D provides us with a mentor base and financial aid. AVL also helps with this financial aid.

RHS provides us with a meeting facility, an outfitted shop (wood, auto, and CAD), and a teacher sponsor.

We also have many companies that are associated with team mentors who do things such as provide materials and equipment that is not available to the team at the school.

4.Are they reliable?

We hold excellent relationships with our sponsors and have found that they are always there when we need them. Besides that I'm not sure exactly reliable means.

5.Do they give you money, services, free stuff?

See 3.

6.Are they good at the services they do, if any?

GM provides excellent mentors that have helped us over the years to become the team we are today. Without them we would not be the same team.

RHS has an extremely close relationship with the team and acts more like a partner to the team as compared to what other schools may be.

7.Who is your best sponsor?

We love our sponsors all equally!
Though RHS has the most intimate relationship with us (being our school).

8.How do you get people to sponsor you?

I will start out with saying that we are not the best team to get an opinion on this from, as we have had the same sponsor for many years, but I will explain our process.

We start with brainstorming businesses that team members have affiliations with; these could be such affiliations such as a parent who is an employee or a local business who is interested in the program. We then prepare a presentation about our team, detailing every aspect of the team. We want this presentation to be an accurate representation of our team. This presentation is then given at a business of choice (who is contacted pre-meeting to determine if there is any sponsorship interest).
The owner is also invited to a competition (season pending) to get a feel of the FIRST atmosphere.

If all goes well we have another sponsor!

[princessnatalie]

1.Who do you have sponsor you?
We have 20 sponsors. Big names include US Digital, ON Semiconductor, HP, Boeing, Sharp.

2.Where are they located?
All in our surrounding community. We are from Camas, Washington and most of our sponsors are from Camas/Vancouver WA and Portland OR.

3.What do they do?
Donate money, materials, food, mentors.

4.Are they reliable?
Yeah, our sponsors are pretty reliable. The ones that mentor our team often have stronger relationships with us than sponsors who just donate.

5.Do they give you money, services, free stuff?
As said in 3, money, food, materials etc.

6.Are they good at the services they do, if any?
Yes. We have strong relationships with our sponsors, and we recognize the importance of keeping those relationships. Because of this it helps our sponsors want to support us.

7.Who is your best sponsor?
Uhmmm, this is suuper subjective. They are equal(:

8.How do you get people to sponsor you?
We look for various tech based companies in the area, and call to see if they are interested in having our team come in and give a presentation. If so we go and present, and yeah.
We also target smaller companies that may be willing to help in small donations or just food support.

[thefro526]

1.Who do you have sponsor you?

Our Major Sponsor right now, is Sea Box Inc - and it's Sister Company The Inventor's shop. We're also sponsored by two smaller local companies, Shelby Mechanical and Arizona Designs.

2.Where are they located?

Both Sea Box and TIS are located in East Riverton NJ Approximately 15-20 minutes from 816's High School and Work Shop. Shelby Technical Is Located right down the street from Sea Box, and Arizona Designs is located Approximately 1/2 hour from 816's High School.

3.What do they do?

Sea Box designs, manufactures, and modifies ISO Shipping Containers for both Military an Civilian use. If you've seen a Container on a Military Base, odds are that we made it, modified it, or sold it to them. (I work for them, btw.)

TIS is a commercial Machine shop that works on a variety of projects. A large portion of their work comes from Sea Box, but they have also done work for General Electric as well as many local companies.

Shelby Mechanical works on large piping and refinery jobs, mainly in the New Jersey, New York, Easter Pennsylvania and Delaware area.

Arizona Designs is a Graphics Company that specializes in Automotive Decals.

4.Are they reliable?

Considering that I'm Employed by Sea Box, and the President of the Company (Owns both Sea Box and TIS) absolutely loves FRC, I'd say they're pretty reliable.

One of the VP's from Shelby Mechanical Has a son on the team, so he's been able to help whenever asked.

This is the first year that we've worked with Arizona, so I can't really speak to their reliability, but they were able to do some work for us with 2 days notice.

5.Do they give you money, services, free stuff?

Sea Box provides 816 with Financial Assistance, as well as Engineering Support (Me) and compensates me for time spent competing with the team (when I should be working).

The Inventor's Shop provides 816 with numerous Machining, Welding and Sheet Metal resources at no labor cost to us. They're also extremely helpful with certain aspects of design.

Shelby Mechanical provides Financial Assistance and Mentor support.

Arizona Designs did the Decal Work on our Machine this year.

6.Are they good at the services they do, if any?

Sea Box is extremely supportive of our team, and when ever we've asked for something, we've gotten it.

The Inventor's Shop is absolutely fantastic. They've managed to make quite a few parts for us with only a few days notice.

Shelby Mechanical is extremely helpful and has a true interest in the success of our team.

Arizona did a fantastic job on our Decals, this is one of the relationships we hope to work on.

7.Who is your best sponsor?

Our sponsor's are all great, but I would have to tip my hat to Sea Box and The Inventor's Shop for their Support. The President and Owner of Both Companies actually came out to one of our Events this year. It was very cool.

8.How do you get people to sponsor you?

A lot of our Sponsorship is done through connections that people have in the community. I spoke with my Employer, Sea Box about them possibly sponsoring our team, we then put a presentation together and the rest is History.

Shelby Mechanical was picked up through a parent on our team, and they've turned out to be a great help.

We were able to get our foot in the door with Arizona because of the relationship between them and Shelby Mechanical. Arizona has done a lot of work for Shelby in the past, so it was pretty easy for us to get them to hook it up.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

1.Who do you have sponsor you?

Our main financial sponsors are NASA and JC Penny. I suspect a lot of younger teams are a lot like this. Together they cover $7,000 of our ~$11,000 budget.

We have used the NASA Rookie grant for 3 years. You are only likely to get this for two, however, reading the rules carefully NASA said they would be willing to give a limited number of grants to teams in their third year. We decided to apply, because there was simply no reason not to and we desperately needed the money. We were pleasantly surprised to receive the grant!

The lesson to take away here is to carefully read the regulations for grants and funding and apply if you have any shot of getting it. It certainly can't hurt, and we owe our season to NASA. Without a second regional, we wouldn't have been able to inspire kids the way we did this year, and we certainly wouldn't have been able to bring school board members to an event.

Our other main financial sponsor is Sneeringer, Monahan, Provost, Redgrave Title Agency - one of our parent's firms who contributes a large sum to 2791.

We are sponsored in other useful ways other than monetarily. Anderson Power Products supplied us with most of our electronics parts this year free of charge, letting us make a super cool removable electronics board. Noel's Machine Shop did lots of CNC operations for our robot and was responsible for many, MANY of the parts on the robot. Douglas Industrial gave us any bolt, screw, or rivet we needed free of charge. While they don't help pay the FRC registration fee, these sponsors are invaluable.

We also receive sponsorship from "One Proud Nana!" - our head mentor's mother.

2.Where are they located?

NASA and Anderson are far away.

Our local JC Penney sponsored us. They are located in Latham, a few miles from the team.

SMPR Title Agency is located in Albany, another few miles from the team.

Douglas Industrial is about a 2 minute drive from Shaker High - we make regular runs to them.

Noel's is a similar distance.

3.What do they do?

See above.

4.Are they reliable?

Absolutely. Shaker doesn't have many sponsors, but the sponsors we do have are AMAZING.

5.Do they give you money, services, free stuff?

Yes.

6.Are they good at the services they do, if any?

Yes.

In particular with Noel's - we ask them to do things that should be impossible, and they figure it out free of charge. One of our mentors asked them to mill a hex pattern into a sprocket. Seriously. And they returned a durable result that lasted the entire competition season.

7.Who is your best sponsor?

I don't want to single out any one sponsor - we could not survive without a single one of them. I'm not exaggerating - we needed every sponsor or we would have gone to one event. Our performance as a team at WPI would not have inspired students the way our performance as a team (not win-loss record) at CT did.

8.How do you get people to sponsor you?

Asking them is a good start.