iF's $1 Plan

[SarahB]

Originally posted by KenWittlief
I like your idea of setting up a fund to support new teams and I think it would be even better if we can get money from outside FIRST teams themselves.

For FIRST to grow we need corporate sponsors. Collecting money from one FIRST team to support another one might help get a team through in a pinch, but its only redistributing funds within FIRST (as a whole).

For there to be real growth (to get a team at every HS in the country) we need to think big, and bring in outside money - more than what existing teams have now.

If you read carefully, we’re not taking money from the teams, we’re taking money from the students/faculty/engineers/etc. on the teams. This money wouldn’t normally go into FIRST because the ~$25 a single team might raise from collecting $1 from each person wouldn’t do anything so they don’t bother. The thing that makes it work is the fact that we’re doing it on such a large scale. While $25 doesn’t do much, $25000(slightly optimistic, but still) can do a whole lot.

On the subject of corporate sponsorship, one of the things we would use the money for is to gain non-profit organization status for iF. With this, companies will be a lot more likely to donate because they get lots of nice tax breaks and such. Also, many companies out there can not donate to teams because they aren’t allowed to donate to school groups. iF, however, is not a school group and thus they can donate to us and we can distribute the money to the teams.