Lowest Budget??

[Marinesniper77]

This year our school picked up the cost of the entry fee. We picked up about 700 in donations from sponsors and some people. Within the past week some more money was donated to us and we recieved a $1000 grant to offset our travel expenses (hotel rooms were picked up by individuals)

[nobrakes8]

The board of Ed paid for our entry fees for nationals, one regional, and like 2,000 bucks strictly for the build season (use it or lose it money)

Our biggest and to my knowledge only sponsor to donate money was Timken with like 500 bucks.

It dosen't matter that we don't have a flashy robot, cool carts, the best tools, or lots of computers. That didn't stop us from building a regional winning robot.

Haveing 5-6 core kids building the robot and working everynight, advisors that learned from mistakes made in previous years, and knowing what works and what dosen't is more important than 30-50k.

[ConKbot of Doom]

Each kid that was to participate had to raise $400 for our team if they wanted to go to the competitions. That is how we handled our cash. I managed to land Jacobs Engineering as our main sponsor again this year and get $10k. But most of our costs was travel, hotels, and event registration. We only spent about $500 on additional parts for our robot.
After the initial sign up, 60 or so kids going to 2 regionals, plus registration, the little bit extra for parts on the robot, it was projected around $30,000. But the team downsized to around 30, so it wasn't that high. I don't know what the final budget was.
And I would have to agree, having a good build group, and good advisors is definitely more important than having a ton of cash to throw at it.