A fundraiser concept for football towns.

[Max Lobovsky]

A can or bottle drive is a bit different than what was suggested here. That is definitley a reasonable way to make money because you are getting cans at a much higher rate. People aren't going to be lining up to throw away a single can at a game. Even if you get a can every 5 seconds, $100 will take you nearly 3 hours.

As I said before, the publicity is still useful. Just one of those people throwing out their cans may be the owner of a small local company willing to donate money, services, or mentors.

[rocknthehawk]

you guys would be surprised at what redemption-airs can make....

building on the idea of can drives...we have regualers that come in every day at the redemption center i work at....here is what they do: go to a local busniess (fast food joint or whatever) and ask if they'd mind if you set up a trash can with a hole in the top for just cans bottles or whatever, and tell them why and that you'll pick it up on day 'x'. it helps the business because their trashcans don't fill up quickly and they don't have to despose of it, plus they are helping you guys out. there is a man that comes in every day with his car FULL, and he makes close to $2000 A WEEK....just some food for thought...

[Kevin Sevcik]

an idea for the non-crushing states. make a soda can launcher to shoot the cans up and into the trashcan. There are many ways you could do it, springs, pneumatics, etc. the higher you shoot the cans into the air, the bigger a crowd you'll draw. extra credit for making the contraption as rube goldbergian as possible. super bonus points for making an electric one that uses induction to launch the cans.

One point here is that driving a robot around uses a lot of power. You might need to switch from motorcycle batteries to actual car batteries, as most unremarkable car batteries have 2x-5x the capacity of the batteries we use.

[bhweezer]

It wasn't a fundraiser, but 364 shot t-shirts in the crowd at our football and basketball games this year. It really go the crowd to get pumped up when our team would be losing. We took our robot from 2004, and mounted a air compressed cannon (kind of like a spud gun, but with air) on it. Shooting at about 60 psi would launch the shirts about 50 yards up and over the stands.