What to do when you lose support from your school?

[PayneTrain]

I have worked with teams where corporate sponsorship and community support are the backbone of the organizations. It is not only possible to function without major financial input from the school, I would almost say it's preferable. It encourages your team members to go out into the community to drum up awareness and support instead of taking a check from the school board and moving on. In my time raising money for 422 as a student through grants, presentations to corporations, and petitions to booster organizations that work in parallel through the school, we were able to significantly increase our budget over a span of the two years I worked with the marketing division and in turn allowed the team to diversify its activities and greatly improve on outreach activities, which in turn can result in even more funding, higher goals, and more cool stuff to do.

Don't get me wrong, you never want to turn down money, and some long tenured and well known teams receive a lot of financial support from both their school district and community sponsors (11, IIRC), and it is important to fight to keep what you have or at least reach a compromise to continue allowing use of an in-school facility. But also realize this could open a door for your team to continue and maybe even thrive.