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

[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