Best Practices for finding manufacturing support.

[Madison]

I'd like to find a local shop that wants to join our team as a sponsor and provide manufacturing support during the build season. I want to do more work teaching students about design and less supervision of things like drilling holes and cutting stock to length, but I believe that'll require moving a lot of our production out of house since the availability of the experienced mentors on my time is, unfortunately, a finite resource.

We've had little trouble raising the money we need to compete effectively, but we haven't had any success in tempting a manufacturing sponsor to join us and offer in-kind services.

I'd love some advice or anecdotes about what some of y'all have done to get this sort of sponsor on board. What is the carrot that you dangle before them to get their support?

Can anyone offer a ballpark idea for the value of the contributions by sponsors like this? I'd love to find someone who'll provide sponsorship akin to that provided by IFI, for example, but I have NO idea what sort of financial burden that really is for the sponsor.