Sponsorship letter.

[Dorienne]

Very well written, Kartik! Our team has always done these types of letters, it's awesome to see one single student take up the initiative to try and get sponsors.

I would recommend discussing FIRST in this email as well, not just telling them about your team. Start out with telling what FIRST stands for, and then elaborating on the program itself.

Also, a bit of advice: If they do not respond to your email, I would highly recommend you call them or go to visit them. A visit is always the best choice if they do not reply. Take some flyers with you and information for them to see about your team and FIRST, and be ready to answer any questions they may have.

Best of luck to you and your team!

[Rick TYler]

Hi Kartik. Nice letter. I agree with Beth, print it on paper and stick it in an envelope. Email is much to easier to ignore and delete.

I'm pretty sure I could write a "better" letter than yours, but it would sound like an adult marketing guy wrote it which is NOT what you are looking for. There are a couple of small changes you could make to add to its professionalism without hurting the student-written flavor. I've pasted a slightly modified version below, and included some comments in [brackets].

I am Kartik Singla, a grade 12 student from Waterloo Collegiate Institute. We would like to ask for your assistance to help us participate in the FIRST Robotics program's 2005-2006 season. [I like the fact that you tell them what you want up front. A lot of times amateurs will bury this at the bottom of the letter – which is a part of the letter that they won’t read if you don’t catch their attention up here.] This competition is a great way for your company to get involved in the community. Our school has been participating in it for two years now [Generally speaking, write out numbers less than ten, and use numerals for bigger numbers. An exception is when the small number is part of a range which includes a bigger number, such as “rainfall ranges from 5 to 20cm per month.”] Over 50 students at WCI have participated in FIRST, and 19 have already gone on to study science and engineering in college. Many of these earned scholarships through the FIRST program and were able to attend colleges that might otherwise have been out of their reach. [Make sure you include something specific about what FIRST does for you and your school. PR people think in anecdotes. Give them a good story.]

[The reader needs to learn a little bit about FIRST. Check usfirst.org for some standard language. They won’t mind if you steal it. How about this instead?] FIRST means “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." In 2005, over 30,000 [check number] students and adult volunteers participated in about 1,000 FIRST teams around the world. Most are in Canada and the USA, but there are also teams from such far flung locations as Brazil, the UK, and Israel. These teams compete at 30 regional tournaments each spring, and the top teams are invited to a world championship in April. There are currently two regional tournaments held each year in Canada– Toronto and Waterloo. The Waterloo regional was started this year with the efforts of University of Waterloo and major corporations such as X, Y and Z.

Our team participated in both Canadian regional tournaments this year. The robot was built entirely at the University of Waterloo by twelve [an exception to our rule about numbers – since most of the numbers in this sentences are small, we demoted “12” to a small number. English is a tricky language] WCI students with the help of three UW undergraduate engineering students, one UW graduate student, one Engineering professor, one WLU student and one *** employee. We were supported by companies like *****,***,****,****,*****,****. This has truly been a community project and we would like to get more community involved. We wish to participate in both regionals again for our 2005-2006 season. We ask for the support of your corporation to help us continue our growth this year.

[Your ending can be improved. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. How about: We are meeting with corporate and community leaders to present our plans for next year, and to ask for support of many kinds – not just financial. We would like to meet with you next week. You can contact me via email at xxxxxx@yyyy.com, or call me at 123-456-7890. In any event, I will be contacting you soon.] Please reply back to this email if you would like further information, or set up a meeting to discuss about our team and the competition.

Thanks
[I would use a formal business closing like "Yours Truly".]

Kartik Singla
Public Relations Captain
Team 1385- Gear Vikings!

“FIRST is not about people building robots, it’s about Robots building people”

[How about this quote instead.]
"...to create a world where science and technology are celebrated... where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes..." - Dean Kamen, FIRST Founder

[Joe Matt]

Great letter, but as with everything, here is my ideas and changes....

-What is FIRST? What are it's goals? Ideals?
-Change the organization a bit, but all the info on FIRST together, then start another paragraph on what you team has accomplished and it's brief history.
-Why should this company sponsor the team? First, talk about recruitment, and also point out what type of recognition sponsors get (signage on the robot, shirts, etc).
-Explain what the different abbriviations for each engineering field is.

Here is my letter...

I am Kartik Singla, a grade 12 student from Waterloo Collegiate Institute in [insert city/providence]. Our team is part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, an international program that aims to recognize engineers and scientists as heros and idols for students, like sports stars and actors/actresses are now. FIRST holds 30 regional events around the world every March/April, including two in Canada; Toronto and Waterloo.

Our team participated in both Canadian regionals this year. The robot was built entirely at the University of Waterloo by 12 WCI students with the help of 3 University of Waterloo undergraduate engineering students, 1 Universit of Waterloo graduate student, 1 Engineering professor, 1 WLU student and 1 *** employee. Some of our current sponsors include *****,***,****,****,*****,****. Every year our team spends $10,000 to register for one regional and get the parts for our robot, and thats not including travel charges, hotel rooms, and other parts! We need all the help we can get, and we hope next year our team could add you to our list of amazing sponsors! All of our sponsors are displayed on team shirts, the robot, and on our website [Enter info about students who are working with those sponsors or have internships with them.]

Just to give you an idea of what we do, I want to invite you to our website at [instert website]. Please contact us through mail or email at [insert email address] to discuss our team and FIRST in more dail.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to represent your great company/organization next year!

Go [inster robot name]!

Just to add, you should mention the amount of money you need and who specifically its for. (E.x. "We need $6,000 to pay for the entrance fee for the Finger Lakes Regional"). This is the bottom line that the company will ask you if they are interested.

Originally Posted by JosephM

-Why should this company sponsor the team? First, talk about recruitment, and also point out what type of recognition sponsors get (signage on the robot, shirts, etc).

[Bill Moore]

As well as seeking new sponsors, don't forget your current sponsors as well.

When a sponsor steps up and makes a donation (money, resources or services), an immediate letter of thanks should be sent from the team. Often we will find these posted on bulletin boards at their place of business once they receive them.

At or near the end of your season, a more personal letter of thanks should come from an individual student or two on the team. In this letter cover your team accomplishments through the past year; remember your accomplishments are much more than any awards or your robot's Won/Lost record. Also include how this FIRST Robotics program has personally helped you develop as a student, and give concrete examples explaining this development. Examples would be leadership of a sub-team, mentoring a FLL team, developing speaking skills during team presentations, developing engineering skills, etc. Let them know that their support is directly responsible for the growth you have made, and that you appreciate and look forward to their continued support of this fine program in the future.

Definitely seek out new sponsors each year, but remember to credit your current sponsors to help keep them on board. As your sponsorship numbers increase, your team will be able to stretch and do more to bring the influence of FIRST into your whole community.

Good Luck with your endeavors.

[Kartik Singla]

Thanks guys!

Special thanks to Beth and Dorienne for the encouragement. Also, Mr. Rick Tyler, awsome recommendations. I have included almsot all the changes that you've suggested. Joseph I have included an additional paragraph talking about FIRST -- cheers to that. Bill I am in the process of writing a letter to our current sponsors but great suggestions doode! Plutonium thanks for your input but we do have sponsorship levels (which does discuss the budget of the team) that we will send out to companies once we hear a good response from them.

Thanks again guys. Two thumbs up to your gracious support.

[Alaina]

I don't have any suggestions for content, but that's a really good letter! It's short but it gets the point across while putting a lot of emphasis on the community.
My only suggestion is keep it less than one page long. It's kinda like presenting a résumé ... the employer doesn't want to spend too much time on it because he's got other things to do.

I hope you get the sponsorship!

[Stu Bloom]

WOW ... GREAT letter, great suggestions and improvements, and just a great thread all around! This should be REQUIRED reading for all students. As fundraising and corporate sponsorship are so important to the ongoing health of a FIRST team I think it would also be helpful for a special White Paper section on "Fundraising" to be created and to include this type of information/example.

[BandChick]

It's a great letter, and it shows how much you care about the program. I've linked you to the pamplet my team made to help get more sponsorship and community outreach in hopes that might help you some more. I'm waiting on my advisor to give me a copy of OUR sponsor sheet so I can forward that on to you as well. Good luck!

If you need any help feel free to contact me!

http://bandchick.shadesofkeith.com/a...s/Brochur1.doc

[Rick TYler]

Bump. Thought this might of use to some new teams.

[orelinde]

WOW this was truely a great letter with lots of suggestions and way it woudlk work for everyone. I hope this type of a letter coudl be published on FIRST so that more teams can use this idea to get sponsers. i mean the more people who know about FIRST the more FIRST can do for everyone.

[KathieK]

Jessica Boucher compiled a number of NEM suggestions and NEMO published a White Paper, Creating a Killer Team Packet!. "The purpose of this whitepaper is to help teams create clear, professional packets to solicit sponsorship, from materials selection to color choices." You might get some good ideas from this paper.

We encourage mentors who work on the non-engineering aspects of teams to join NEMO and share ideas so we can publish white papers like this to benefit the entire FIRST community.