**Fundraising: The Traveling Segway

[Dan Richardson]

Originally posted by generalbrando
Stud Man Dan: You make good points. However, for many teams this would not be a risky investment. This doesn't apply to all teams, of course. However, if a group of teams spent $500 each, that would be just 50 rides in your $10 scenario (again, I would charge $20 because honestly, it seems like $20 means nothing around here). Also, for some teams this sort of thing will be a fitting fundraiser where other types such as a dinner aren't possible (1020, for instance, doesn't have the man power, time, or customer for most fundraisers). This probably won't be a main source of income for any team, but $200 a weekend (as Hammond has been doing) multiplied by let's say 10 weekends in the pre-season is $1500 after cost. $1500 was half of 1020's budget (not including the registration donated by NASA).

well dinner was just one example ( ps dinners don't take much to put on.. all you have to do is cut a deal w/ a restaraunt and they will often allow you to hold a fund raisers in parts of their place and you could get a cut of the money and they just upcharge the meals.. or put a set price on the dinner tho this option is often harder to explore )

When I wrote this however I was considering the option of a carwash. Carwash's take about 8 people, which usually every team can scrounge up. For supplies it costs mayb 40 dollars ( waterbill has never been counted, because we've never been asked by anyplace we've hosted one to compensate ). I know every time I've been involved with a carwash our group has got around $400-$1300 .. ( $1300 was a high.. 400 was a low ; we average around $700 ) these figures are not made up. That at the low end is around a 1000% return on your investment. You wouldn't have to do much to make back your investment, other than on the segway where you'd need 25-50 people to ride depending on $ amt. This can be done on every saturday, or every other saturday.

I wasn't saying that the Segway was a bad idea, I was just saying there are better ideas. People will always need cars washed, or need to eat, or be willing to attend a nice fund raiser dinner. The intrigue in riding in a segway might not always be there. Liablity is a lot less, and if your investment brakes... your in trouble, because who's responsible? The team who had it at the time, or every team that paid for it? If your team had it while it broke, you could be in big trouble.

Also, in your example you have 9 teams dividing the cost up. Even cost means Even use I'm asuming which would mean each team has the segway for 5-6 weeks. This is for the entire year, this is assuming that you don't cut out any time for competition weekends, or even build weekends.

That leaves every team with $500-700 ( depending on which team you are )after cost. Granted $500 is good, but thats assuming you make $200 every weekend, which is most likely not a stretch. But $500 after 5-6 weekends of work ? A person could make that off minimum wage working 10 hours a day on saturday and sunday in that amount of time.

Again I think its a cool idea.. I think that if you could get one to use and get like a booth at a fair or something and let people ride it a bit, charge however much you wish, you could prob. make a fair amount of money because you didn't have any cost to begin w/.

But to split cost w/ other teams to buy a segway for fundraising purposes. I don't believe that is very cost effective, and it might be better to save your money and use it other ways. ( more than just what I mentioned )

Dan