Fundraisers

[Dimples04]

I think Jerkey sales work well especially if you turn it into a contest on who sales the most. Oh yeah...What are bucket drops??? I was also wondering on how to fundraise. So far al we've done is look up engeneer companies online to see if they wanna donate money. It's kinda hard to fundaise at my school because people are penny pinchers and the adults in my city are pretty cocky so its hard to just sell stuff to people. I'm thinking of posting something in the SF Chronicle to see what kind of response we get back. What do you guys think??

[Alexander McGee]

Well, a really good one is to work concessions at sporting events. My team runs a concession stand and a few beer booths at Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions (they suck!).

We make lots of cash doing that, but you need a lot of students and parents. About 25 total for each event. We work about 11 of them each. Pulls in a good 20 g's a year.

Well, to the point, contact local arenas, and the people in charge of the food, and ask if they need help, or if they could fit you in.

Any questions, email me at magnasmific@yahoo.com

yeah.

[miketwalker]

Originally posted by Dimples04
Oh yeah...What are bucket drops???

Pretty much begging for money. We take our bot out to Walmart, make boards with action shots, the workshops, etc. etc. and things to show the games, and such. Then you have buckets and as people enter and exit some will drop some money in, start asking questions, etc. Sometimes you find people interested in mentoring who never knew about it, depending on the people you can make it a pretty good fundraiser (maybe like $300 for a few hours, not much, but it isnt bad since your interacting as well) and you really sometimes get your image out there, and (well since we're the "sleeper" town for Kennedy Space Center and the town where you see the shuttle launch and such) we have engineers who get interested, then come down and check it out, some who will offer machine shops, etc. It really helps in more ways then money. People sometimes won't donate money, but things you need (machine shops, volunteer time, ideas, etc.)

[Sam R.]

That a cool idea. Thanks. Can't have a consession stand in our school events because our school athletics already have one.

[Kevin A]

Ok..heres a long shot...
Get your principal to agree to stand on a table next to a wall and be duct taped to the wall. You then make an announcement that at lunchtime, the principal will be duct taped to the wall...by students by strips of tape and putting them on him/the wall. You then sell foot long strips of duct tape to the students for 1$ each.

Everyone buys tape and sticks him there...and at the end of lunch you pull the table out and see if he/she sticks there....

Best of Luck,
Kevin

[Drew Hopman]

I have a cool pamphlet that asks for money and it hasn’t let us down yet. So far we got 2 commitments for $5000 and 3 commitments for $500. One was just collected today! You can see it on our website http://www.mibot.org/team801/PDF/mission.pdf . Everyone we have that we have asked has given us something. Plus we have a candy sale that makes our team about $1000.

[Doug G]

Team 701 just held a LAN Party this past weekend in our school library. It was a Lock in event for participants under 18 (students) and took place from 8 pm Friday 'til 6 am Sat. We charged $18 per person and sold Pizza, Red Bull, Rockstars, soda, candy, muffins, etc for just over cost. We had 30+ computers setup to play Demo versions of Halo, Unreal Tournament, and Battlefield 1942. We also setup 6 XBOX's on Projector screens and TV's and networked them. We also had a Nintendo64 as well. We had 52 people show up and made over $1000 in just one night. Very Successful - and many want us to hold another one. Just setup what you can - admit as many as playing stations you have, charge $10-20, and you'll make $500 - $1000 EASILY!!

[Sam R.]

Hey doug
Could you please send me more information about that evening. I am talking with a team mate of mine and he thinks that this would be a great idea.

e-mail the details to me at:
stclairrobotics@yahoo.com

[DirtyBird213]

As an advisor for the "Dirty Birds" we have learned a lot about fund-raising! One of the major things we learned is to NOT fund-raise during build time! We do all of our fund-raising in the "off" season. We raise our money by doing a service, instead of selling stuff. Try to contact any large arena, track, fairgrounds, etc. We sell beverages and snacks at our local fair during demolition derby's. We made $1,500.+ selling this year. Our biggest fundraiser is cleaning up at a racetrack (an hour away) that hosts the Winston Cup series. We were only able to clean 2 days out of the 8 that were offered, but we still raised $2,500.00. Keep in mind we only worked 5 hours total, it is the easiest money you will ever make! We also made $1,100.00 selling coffee and hot chocolate at our local pumpkin festival. If your town hosts a tree lighting festival or anything like that, you can see if you can sell there. The added bonus to that is that you can also show your robot off. I hope this helps, I wish you luck motivating your students, that is the hardest part!

[charlie_grr]

I'm currently working on a raffle for our team. We're going to sell about 700/800 tickets at $5 each and they have TWO chances to win their choice of either an xbox, gamecube, ps2, OR a $100 gift certificate to any store of their choice. This is a very profitable fundraiser. I'm working on getting the prizes donated (mainly just the consoles) by some big business stores around here. And our schools graphic design class prints all the tickets for free. At most we're going to spend about 280 bucks if the two winners choose the xbox and they aren't donated. so in theory this is a great fundraiser but we'll just have to wait and see.

[Doug G]

I'd be careful with doing raffles in Cal. There are several DA's across the state (Riverside is one) that have filed criminal charges (Penal Code 320.5) against school districts involved with selling raffle tickets to help fundraise. To hold a "legal" raffle fundraiser in Cal. you must send in an application to do so by Sept. 1 before the year you hold the raffle. For exaple if you want to hold a raffle in March 2004, you must submit the application by Sept. 1, 2003. Then by Sept of the following year you must submit a follow-up form that states how much you made and that 90% of the raffle ticket sales went to the charity/non-profit group. Below are all the links you need from the Cal. Att Gen. Office. Last year we held a raffle and made over $4800 and this year someone warned us about the legality of it all. After I did my research, it was already past the Sept. and we cancelled this years raffle (luckily before we printed the tickets). Anyways take it for what its worth...

http://caag.state.ca.us/charities/statutes/pc320.pdf

http://www.caag.state.ca.us/charities/faq.htm

http://www.caag.state.ca.us/charitie...ffle/nrp_1.pdf

http://www.caag.state.ca.us/charitie...ffle/nrp_2.pdf

[fundraiseroc]

Very interested in this idea.
I do the fundraising for our team and would like to get some more specifics if I could...
How do you raise money working at a local sports arena? Do you use a vending booth of the arena and get to keep the profit from items you puchase and sell?

How does that work with cleaning up the arena do you make money from returnables or does arena pay you instead of a clean up staff?

Please advise we are ALWAYS Looking for new ideas

Originally Posted by DirtyBird213

As an advisor for the "Dirty Birds" we have learned a lot about fund-raising! One of the major things we learned is to NOT fund-raise during build time! We do all of our fund-raising in the "off" season. We raise our money by doing a service, instead of selling stuff. Try to contact any large arena, track, fairgrounds, etc. We sell beverages and snacks at our local fair during demolition derby's. We made $1,500.+ selling this year. Our biggest fundraiser is cleaning up at a racetrack (an hour away) that hosts the Winston Cup series. We were only able to clean 2 days out of the 8 that were offered, but we still raised $2,500.00. Keep in mind we only worked 5 hours total, it is the easiest money you will ever make! We also made $1,100.00 selling coffee and hot chocolate at our local pumpkin festival. If your town hosts a tree lighting festival or anything like that, you can see if you can sell there. The added bonus to that is that you can also show your robot off. I hope this helps, I wish you luck motivating your students, that is the hardest part!

[Woe]

For our area events, we get $80 an hour. You have to be a non-profit and have 8 people working the entire time.

[Stephi Rae]

Team 1983 has experienced some difficulties with monney in the past, and are anticipating a possibly difficult year ahead of us if some of our former sponsorships fall through for the coming year.

All that aside, it is my opinion that sponsorship from a business that gets excited and is interested in being a long term sponsor is the best way to go. Though we have not yet achieved this, it is something that we have begun to chase.

We believe that having a business plan, or documentation of budget, fundraising techniques and general team information is a solid asset to generating community interest in your program.

Two of our annual fundraisers generated about $10,000 apeice this year that we think we will be able to continue for many years to come. The first is a student letter writing campaign. Each student is required to send a bare minimum of 5 letters to family, friends, acquaintances and local community members or companies, with a team overview and gentle request for a contribution. We greatly encourage students to send more than 5, and this has proved very influential in increasing community interest and awareness. It is also key to send thank you letters, and a sort of team update to these contributors, so they are aware of what your team has been able to accomplish. (This also tends to make them more likely to contribute again the next year)

Another fundraiser was our spaghetti dinner and dessert auction. Local families buy tickets, which is the only cost they pay for food, music entertainment, and a presentation from the team. There is then an auction where we sell both regular auction items and desserts for them to eat or take home. We also have a "Fund-a-skunk" part of the auction, where people can donate money to send a specific student to competition (approximately $250 per competition per student) or just a general donation for this purpose.

Our seemingly best policy is that each student member is required to raise $250 for each competition that they plan to attend. This helps to get the students motivated to fundraise, specifically if you give them a beneficiary cut of what is raised at each team fundraising event that they attend.

I believe there are a couple of different business plans in the white papers section, I know that Team 1983's is there, and also at www.ahsrobotics.us. Hope this helps you! If you have any questions about our plan, or some of our ideas, feel free to PM me or email me at stephanie.hoag@gmail.com

[GeorgeTheEng]

Our team runs a battle of the bands event at our school twice a year. Usually in early December and late May. We've got bands from the school (a requirement for various reasons that at least one member must be a student in our school).

It's a fair amount of work, but honestly little overhead. The school provides the venue and the sound system. The bands bring thier own instruments. Our costs are usually related to things like t-shirts for give aways and sales, some costs for refreshments at intermission, and prizes for the winners. We run between 5 and about 8 bands.

We average between $2000 and $2500 a show depending on expenses and how many people show up.

PS: If anyone happens to be in South Jersey next weekend, this Spring's show will be May 31, 6 (I think) to 11pm in the Performing Arts Center at Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly, NJ.