Large Corporate Sponsorships?

[nbetik]

In my limited experience, having a contact of some kind is one of the most useful things to have. Sometimes individual employees will have "sponsorship budgets" which basically means they have X amount of money per year to give to charitable/community organizations (although I would be careful with this, i.e. it would be good if you know the person very well). Also, get in touch with existing sponsors, because they may be willing to refer you to other companies/corporations they do business with.

Good luck!

[Jon Stratis]

First, you have to identify your target company(s)... who do you want to sponsor you? This can be tricky - it's tempting to go with a "shotgun" approach, but that generally means you spend less time on each individual company, which in my experience decreases your chances of hooking them. You also want to look to see if the companies are already sponsoring FIRST teams - generally speaking, if they're already sponsoring a team in your area your approach will be different, and need to be inclusive of the other team.

Next, identify why they may want to sponsor you (location, similar fields of interest/engineers, other similar contributions within your area). Many companies want to donate to different organizations. It helps with taxes, makes them look good within their community, and can help them with recruiting new employees or selling products. The problem is, there are a million different organizations they could donate to - what sets yours apart? Why should they give to you instead of Habitat for Humanity, or Big Brothers/Big Sisters?

Finally, identify how they go about funding organizations, and work your way into their process. Many big corporations have a specific grant application you have to go through. Fill it out, but don't stop there. Be persistent in your contacts with them, ask them if you can come by to demo your robot and talk about what you do. Make it difficult for them to just dismiss you out of hand, but if they do say no acknowledge it and go after another company.

A few years back (now that I think about it, more than a few), my team went after Best Buy. One of my students her rookie year decided they should be supporting FIRST and worked with us to fill out grant applications, both for the team and for FIRST in general. She was persistent, dedicated, and energetic, and eventually got a meeting with some of the higher-ups in Best Buy. She managed to get us funding, as well as several other teams in the area, and their involvement with FIRST continued to grow even after she graduated from the team.

Finally, don't discount small businesses either! Sure, everyone wants that "one-and-done" grant that pays for everything, and those generally only come from big companies. But in some areas (where, for example, you don't have any large local companies, or you have a saturation of FRC teams already eating up the big grants) it can be much easier to find 10 small companies that, when combined, can equal the big company in their donations. This has the added benefit of being more stable in the long run as well - 1 big company that stops donating creates a huge hole that needs to be filled, while 1 smaller company leaves a much smaller hole.