Questions on funding/ folding a team

[matthewdenny]

So here is our situation, we are a 2nd year team in SE Ohio. Last year we were one of the many new JCP sponsored teams. They paid for the registration and KOP ($6500), and we got about $2000 from sponsorship, and the school itself that we used to build the robot, get to competitions, etc.

This year JCP has lowered their funding to 2500 for this year, and we have been told not to expect anything from the school. Even after 3 months of looking for sponsors we are over a grand short of even being able to register and get a KOP. We have (I'm not trying to give you some some sort of sob story here, just background.) There aren't a lot of businesses here to start with and very rarely can we convince one to sponsor us, and those sponsorships on on the scale of ($25-50).

So I have a couple questions I was hoping you could answer:

1. Is there any obvious solutions for funding that we are missing that you see?

2. Should we register for an event, despite uncertainty on being able to eventually pay for it?

3. If we can't afford the season what do we have to do? Do we inform someone, is there forms, etc?

4. Can we not register for an event, or kickoff, and still build a robot and compete in pre/post season scrimmages.

5. Would we be able to restart our team next year if funding came through? Would we have the same team number?