What your team does for fundraising

[Jill1022]

I see lots of threads here but none that really just have a place to share the different things your team does. Correct me if I didnt search properly.

Team 1022's main self-fundraising events are FanFare and Book Nook.

Fanfare is where we work a concession stand at the Memorial Colisseum (the big arena where concerts and sporting events are held). We make somewhere around 12% of the profits of the night and usually each register (there are four) will make anywhere from $500 - $900 (total profit, not the team's 12% profit) depending on the event. Its a lot of work but we make a lot of money.

The Book Nook is a little place in the commons at school that sells candy, chips, drinks, ect. Last year we ran it by ourselfs but this year we have to share it with the Speech team (who never works it on their dates and still takes half our profits ) The kids at school go there before school and love it.

What do you do?

[Ian Curtis]

Our mentors had the bright idea of using students to perform manual labor for other people. It works really well and makes quite a bit of money. We did it in December for the first time and made $200 with seven people in three or four hours I think. We have a whole bunch of neighborhoods lined up for the spring because our main sponsor is consolidating and no longer will have an office in our area.

[rocknthehawk]

Team 549 simply asks local businesses to sponsor us. We also set up a challenge, the whole team broke up into pairs, and whichever group of two can get the most sponsor money wins their choice of an X-BOX or PS2.
We have a ton of sponsors...from the local pizza shops, to companys like BOSE.

Also, we have a veryfine juice machine set up in the hallway outside our machine shop at school, which usually brings in over 10k a year!

[kevin.li.rit]

You can try selling pizzas periodically and working out a discount with papa johns or whoever.

[KTorak]

Little Ceasars Pizza Kits/Cookie Dough
Candles
Candy Bars
Next year I want to try a LAN Party (well, at the end of this school year to get a start on next season). There are also some other things we might look into.

[Jaime648]

our teams (648) parents work at the mark, a local sports arena, we get sponsors, we havea raffle once a year at a local mall, we sell flashing lights, we went to a local walmart and sold hot dogs hot cocoa chips and stuff like that. and we are working on putting a car wash together. and we do birdies for charity, has something to do with golf.

[dm0ney]

To be a member of Team #217, you must raise $1000.

Most students start with small businesses owned by family, friends, relatives, etc.
From there, we start going to businesses in our area. We have brochures that we can take, we make presentations, and if needed, we bring a robot along.
Once we attract a sponsor, we make sure they stay with us by sending updates and most of us send personal letters as well.
Additionally, we try and get sponsors to come to the Detroit Regional (our 'homecoming' of sorts) to keep interest in our team and also attract other sponsors.
Our robotics team has a tax id number, and donations can be written off (helps a ton).


For my money this year, I had
~500 come from family friends, some personal contributions, others from their private practices as doctors / lawyers.
~500 I got from the Ruzic Research Fund, Mr. Ruzic was a friend of the family before his passing away last year.
~500 a machine shop in the area which donated the money (a friend of the family is in management).

Living in the metro-detroit area, the smaller businesses are a MUST for soliciting funds. It seems that EVERYBODY works for one of the Big 3 and when our team is sponsored by FORD, sometimes you just cant ask GM or DCX to sponsor you.
One of our team members got $5000 this year from Meijers (the grocery store chain) very quickly after making our presentation.
Small Businesses = Your Friend!

The easiest way to get money is to start with some brochures and make presentations. Most companies dont say no to giving money for good causes, and FIRST is one.

PM me if you want a copy of our brochure, I'm sure our marketing staff can get it to you.

[Jeffmudhs]

Team 357 has:

-Been sponsored by PECO.
-Gone to local bussinesses to ask for support.
-Sold Wawa hoagie coupons for 3$ each, team makes 2 dollars off of each sold. Thier easy to sell to teachers or outside wawas.
-Sponsored a school dance, recieving 100% of the profits.
-Gained ITT as a sponsor.
-sold pretzels and soda after school for a few weeks
-Ultimate Prom Raffle! for 1 dollar you can buy a prom raffle ticket, where first place is an insane amount of free stuff from local bussiness (hair dresser limosuine etc.) and second prize was 2 tickets to the prom

[deathbycornchip]

our team colects old printer charteges and cell phones. it is suprising how much one printer chartredge can bring ine. we found one worht 20$!! also car washes work prity good and same with donation bottles all around ur town. i find the most profitabule is if your town has an anuwal street fari or sothing like that have the robtics team set up a both with games and stuff

[jdhawg]

Golf Tournament.

Team Fusion has an annual golf tournament that is our only fundraiser all year. It is completely ran by students. Last year I sat on the porch and watched (I don't golf). This year I didn't even go, since I had family in town and I knew the team wouldn't be needing my help. We made around $30,000 by selling banners and tee signs. There is a white-paper posted here on Chief Delphi on how we run it, and 'Coach Rusty', our booster club president, will be talking about it at the Championship Event. You can also stop the team 364's web site (www.teamfusion364.org) and download an information package on how it's done.

You don't have to work hard to raise money, you just have to work smart.

[Matt Reiland]

Here is some of my ideas - as a sponsor

Allot of the members on CD have come up with innovative ways to collect money and support their team. Some have problems, other have the so called 'Mega Sponsor' that seems to have endless cash and resources, at least to people not affiliated with the team. Our team is somewhere in the middle but I think the team is going to have to start listening up to threads like this. Many may think that once you get someone like GM as a sponsor it is smooth sailing, everything is taken care of. Well, I think that unless you constantly keep up on everything, and do the important followup up items as listed by dm0ney above, your team may be in more trouble than you think. As a sponsor and engineer on my team, I think that our team does a 'dismal' job at fund-raising and I feel like our donation to the team is often taken for granted and sometimes even wasted by the team. Most students, I feel, expect the money to roll in each year as a large hand out with essentially no work required to get it. However, if your team puts all it's eggs in one basket........ Times change at companies, especially right now with this economy. All of the teams that have the Big 3 or Tier I,II,III suppliers as their main sponsor may find that the 'Mega' sponsor can't give what they used to.

I truly believe that each team should have a basic requirement of each student regardless of how much a main sponsor donates to the team. In my mind, and thinking way back to the days when I had to fund-raise, it shows a commitment to the team.

What would I do for a fundraiser - Well I can tell you what I have seen recently that works. In Michigan we pay up front for recycling, 5-10 cents per bottle or can. I usually save up a garbage can of them (actually quite quickly) in my garage and dread going to the supermarket to put them into the machine 1 by 1. Every once an a while a fundraiser comes to my house and instead of begging me to BUY something from them, they ask if there is any way that can take my empty cans and bottles off my hands as a donation. I immediately pop open the garage and give them the whole thing probably 20-25 bucks worth. Based on seeing the car going around the neighborhood, I know it is successful. Along the same lines, at a Jimmy Buffet concert I saw some kids collecting cans in the parking lot after the concert started and they filled up the entire pickup and had to come back!!!

So my opinion is, look at ways you can fund-raise without requiring people to fork over a bunch of cash and it will be successful. Also, don't put all your effort behind a single sponsor in the event that that one sponsor either lowers their donation or maybe even drops the sponsorship completely and you will have great success.

[Rick TYler]

I hate to give out my favorite fund raiser, but then I realized that, hey!, none of you live in Redmond or Sammamish so we should be safe...

Our robotics team hasn't used this yet, but my son's Boy Scout troop has. All figures are typical of this area.

We aerate lawns in the spring. A lawn aerator is like an oversized lawn mower that punches hundreds of holes in a lawn, tearing up the thatch and letting water and nutrients into the soil. If you've seen a lawn covered by little mud cylinders, it has just been aerated.

The minimum cost to rent an aerating machine is around $60 for a couple of hours, and then the homeowner has to lift a big, heavy (100 pounds or so), dirty machine in and out of their SUV, van or truck and drive it home, use it, and then return it.

We can rent a lawn aerating machine for around $120 for the whole weekend. The rental place provides a trailer which we fill with six aerating machines. We take teams of one parent and one Scout around town and drop them off in different neighborhoods with an aerator, sack lunch, bottled water, and an enthusiastic attitude. We take the machine door-to-door and offer to aerate people's lawns for them. We charge a minimum of $40 for a smallish lawn (still less than that $60, you'll note) and as much as $100 for one of those riding-mower lawns. I believe someone once paid my son $120 for a really big lawn.

Our average take is $400 per day per person profit. My son has been to Boy Scout high adventure bases in Florida and Minnesota and had money left over.

This only works in the spring and fall, when most people want their lawns aerated. A lot of professional lawn services do this, too, so you want to make sure you get there first. Some volunteer groups that do this go around in advance and get people to reserve a time and day. This gives you an idea of demand and income.

Other advice. Neighborhoods with big houses are bad because they all have professional gardeners. Really low-income neighborhoods don't work because they don't have the money. You want to find plain old middle-class neighborhoods. Anyone flying an American flag will hire a Boy Scout (don't know about robotics team high schoolers yet), as will most with a Republican bumper sticker on their car. Homes with big SUVs or minivans are good, too. They probably have kids of their own.

It's genuinely hard work, but that's what teenagers are for, right?

[supersy77]

What my teams(230) big fundraiser is a dinner and auction. Every year we sent out people at the beging of the school year to go out to stores and donations from all over town and some nearby towns. We usuually get gift certificates and stuff, but we get lots of stuff. Then we sell tickets for like 12 dollars to everyone. We sell them in school, to family, ect. Then when the auction comes we hire some catering service to make the food and we have a silent, live, and chinese auction. Ii is always a fun time, and we make a good amount of money.

[Jill1022]

Today team 1022 went to our GE factory and collected all the scrap brass/copper/aluminum, sorted it out, put it in a mentor's truck, and took it to Omni Source who bought it from us.

All together it took about and hour and a half with six people. We made $1,100+

Very very good morning for us!