A Plea of Final Desperation

[Beth Sweet]

Team 1504 needs help. Serious help.

The team's mentors have been working nonstop since the end of the 2004 competition season in an attempt to make a university sponsored team a possibility at Michigan State University. MSU has decided to allow the team to be a student sponsored organization, and there is a high school that is just waiting for sponsor confirmation before verifying their support.

I have been on these forums for a few years now, and everytime that I have ever asked for help, someone has been able to come to my aid. Now, I am begging anyone who is able, to help me; to help my team. If anyone has contacts (friends, family, random acquaintances that have been met in an elevator) that work at a company in the East Lansing area (East Lansing, Lansing, Haslett, Okemos, or their surrounding areas) I'm asking that you please help me by giving me information on how to contact them.

At this point, my team that I and others have been working so hard to create, is going to go down the drains, without the help of fellow robotics people. I am asking anyone who is able to help to please step forward by either PMing me, emailing me at cutiebethy@yahoo.com, or by IMing me at (AIM) cutiebethy1113. Thank you in advance, I know that someone will come through for me.
~Beth

[Arefin Bari]

It looks like we are losing teams in FIRST, which is SO not cool. we have lost team 212 (race), we lost team 311 who had an amazing season in 2004, we are about to lose team 267 (Demolition Squad). is there a way we all can come up with some kind of idea, that way we wont lose any team that has joined FIRST.

as far as your team goes beth, i suggest, writing letters to local companies. i have seen teams asking help from local companies and get through a season. funraise. there are a lot of ideas being thrown around in this forum, like car wash (spam get about 500 bucks each car wash), soda machine for robotics team in the high schools, Techtigers (1251) they do a community project for community schools... they sell snacks one day a week and they get a good 100 bucks our of it. there is always a way. i am sure you will get a lot of other ideas. Teamwork has always gotten us somewhere. Good luck...

[Jaine Perotti]

Beth, I am so sorry that your team is having difficulties finding sponsorship.
While I don't have any contacts myself, I have a few unique suggestions as to how you might be able to find new sponsors.

1) Get out a phone book, look in the yellow pages, and make a list of potential sponsors. Write down all of their contact information and addresses. Phone them, mail them, or even visit them to ask for sponsorship. I would recommend the last two, as it is much harder to ignore a phone call or a visit. Divide the jobs between team members so that it isn't so overwhelming.

Using this method, I was able to add at least 100 new sponsors to my team's mailing list.

2) Get a list of the richest people in your town (it is a little bit of a superficial way to get sponsors, but it works). Our team found this information by finding out who had bought the most expensive homes in the area. When our team did this, we mailed letters to the richest people in one of our school districts towns, Kent.

Some of my successes: About a week later, I was on the phone with Ben Rosen, founder of Compaq computers. He ended up hooking us up with other sponsorship possibilities. <-- rich people may have connections, as well as money...

Recently, I also received a letter along with a donation from Jane Kaczmarek, star of the show "Malcolm in the Middle".

3) Let your community know about the desperation of your situation. When you write your fund raising letters, explain the importance of the potential sponsor's help. Don't over do it, but make sure that it is communicated to the public that without their support, the team may no longer exist.

4) Have each member of the team come up with at least 5-10 individuals or businesses that they know to add to the mailing list. Our team has done this: the advantage to it is that businesses/individuals who know someone on the team will be more likely to donate money to it.

5) To keep everything organized, copy all of your sponsor's contact information and amount that they donated into an Excel spreadsheet. That way, you can remeber who has already been contacted that year (businesses hate when they get more than one person visiting them for the same thing) and so that next year, you can approach these same sponsors again.

6) Go to the Cybersonics "FIRST Interactive Rural Support" website. Even if your team isn't rural, there is alot of information here that is very good. Our team has used this website as a resource.

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Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

is there a way we all can come up with some kind of idea, that way we wont lose any team that has joined FIRST.

Arefin, you are so very right about this.

Me and a friend of mine have thought about this a lot. We came up with an idea that has not been fully developed yet, but hopefully may be a possibility for the future.

There are a lot of teams out there who have a lot of money (for whatever reasons there might be). What if these wealthier teams could establish a "scholarship foundation", so to speak, for teams who have a need for money and are in danger of dissolving because of it? If teams across the country could pitch into it, maybe money could be available to those who have been determined to have need.

We first came up with this idea when we heard that some of the teams who had qualified to go to the championships would not be able to go because of a lack of money. We said to ourselves, "If only our team had enough extra money to hep them pay for the expenses!"
From that point on, we thought that if our team ever became wealthy, we would like to have a separate account for extra money to go to needy teams.

I guess this in itself deserves a new thread topic, but I think I may wait awhile before starting one, just because the idea isn't fully developed yet.

--Jaine

[Alexander McGee]

Beth,

My team has made up a binder of sorts which we give to potential sponsors. I can (as soon as Monday, cause i will be at work) email it to you, and make changes to fit your team instead of mine. It really has been the instrument of my team's success; it has testimonials of the benefits of FIRST to students and the community, listed advertising and PR benefits that go towards the sponsor, outlines the basic functions and design of the team, team structure, FIRST organization, has a basic budget built in, and various "levels" of sponsorship with different benefits for different levels of donations.

Let me know if you are interested. I really think it can help.

-Alex