Sponsorship letter.

[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.