Budgets?

[Cactus_Robotics]

I was just curious what different teams budgets were in a rough estimate? Due to funding my team could only afford the one regional w/ registration.
I know were not the only team in this situation but just wondering? Thanks.

[hayakuneko]

i'm not too sure about my team's budget, but we went to Phoenix and LA regionals (but one of our mentors paid the $4000 for Phoenix) and we built 2 robots (or actually we're still building our second one ) but each robot has about $2500 worth of stuff. Umm, yeah so that comes to about... $15,000? Oh yeah, and apparently we still have money.. lol I have no clue how we got this much money...

[BuddyB309]

How much fundraising does your team do? Our team does a butt load. Its the only way.

Being part of FIRST has taught me how to go up to random peoples houses, knock on their door, and say "Hi. I'm from Winnebago's Robotics team and I'm selling raffle tickets. Would you like to buy one?"

[Idaman323]

Heh, well we are running on about $1000 after the kit is paid for. We are hoping next year for a lot of fund raising and more sponsors... Hopefully we can get some more mentors that way also to help guide us... Because we have 2. One doesn't come in a lot and the other is not experienced in robots, but he is with webpages and what not. So... Money is a big deal when it comes to these robotics competitions. Next year we hope we have some

[RoboMadi]

This year our budget was around 30k-35k.
it also includes the registration of two regionals plus Atlanta trip. Rest of the money goes on the robot and to wards our outside projects. This year we kinda got lucky and had 8 sponsors.
We are part of Northern Virginia, home to around 1200 tech companies... so there you go.

[Rick TYler]

2004- $7,000
2005- $6,700
2006- $10,200

Students pay their own travel and we attend one regional. In 2004 and 2005 mentors paid for a lot of things out of their pockets -- I still have a stack of unreimbursed receipts.

[Rickertsen2]

this year we raised about 8k and are in the process of raising another last minute 5k for the nats.

[Donut]

Our team's main source of income has been always been sponsors, in my opinion we've never been able to do even moderately well at fundraising. I don't think there have ever been any team fundraisers in recent years though other than the Arizona tax-credit program (which works rather nicely). This year we had one week where we sold bagels at school, and we made $300-$500 from it, but it was poorly organised and most in the club didn't know about it (our fall seems to be disorganised routinely).

I'm hoping next year we can organise team fundraisers ahead of time, so that the budget will be brought to their attention more and fundraising will become a priority.

[Nuttyman54]

We used to run about $1000 to $1500 over the registration, but this year we really ramped up the efforts and pulled in almost double the money at $14,000. Most of the money comes from sponsorship and "fair share" (every student raises $500). Travel costs and hotel fees for Atlanta are extra

[Joshua May]

This year the team ran on about $6500 as far as i know. Including the costs of the kit.

[Tatsu]

We have about 24k to "work with" but we also have a flex budget... which means we have about 5-7k allocated for atlanta, we're not going this year, so it gets reallocated to other clubs in the school. Hmm fun. We, however, end up paying for staying expenses of all mentors and such, and that does take away a fair chunk of money..

I was wondering how you all raise money? We just got a mill and the tooling is expensive... we'll probably not be able to finance it via our regular budget (maybe $700 or so remaining... and we'll spend about 400 or so on programmer stuff..)

[arabsponsor]

Originally Posted by Tatsu

We have about 24k to "work with" but we also have a flex budget... which means we have about 5-7k allocated for atlanta, we're not going this year, so it gets reallocated to other clubs in the school. Hmm fun. We, however, end up paying for staying expenses of all mentors and such, and that does take away a fair chunk of money..

I was wondering how you all raise money? We just got a mill and the tooling is expensive... we'll probably not be able to finance it via our regular budget (maybe $700 or so remaining... and we'll spend about 400 or so on programmer stuff..)

Our team has no regular sponsors. We fund raise year round. Our typical fund raisers are as follows:
1. Cotten Candy Sales (community fairs and football games)
2. Cleaning up our schools football stadium after home games. (a disgusting job but good money)
3. Donut sales (We make $500.00 for every 200 dozen we sell)
4. Yard Sales (We have two or three a year and make around $800 at each one. Our yard sales are called the dollar store because everything is $1.00) This is a good fund raiser because we are out no money
5. Small donations when we go door to door to local companies (We are in a very rural area)
6. Candle sales (Our students earn $4.00 for every candle they sell towards their motel costs. Some students don't have to pay anything)

Money is always a problem but we always end up raising it in the end. This year an unexpected trip to nationals has us scrambling but we are half way to our needed $9000.00

[kborer22]

the NUtrons budget is somewhere around 250k(we are located on northeastern university property). That sounds like alot but when you break it down its not. Out of that fund comes the salary for out coordinator, lab time, machine shop time, repairs and tools for machines, new hand tools, and electicity for all. Our robot was some thing like $1,700 but we were able to find a machine shop to donate alot of the cnc'd material, so it would have been alot more.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by kborer22

the NUtrons budget is somewhere around 250k

Um, yeah, $250,000 sounds like a lot. If we had a budget like that, I could quit my job and do robotics full time. Yeah, Rick TYler, CEO of a FIRST Robotics team. I like the sound of that.

[BandChick]

Well, we're still putting together the details of our budget, but I'll tell you that BEFORE travel/hotel costs and competition costs, we've spent about $30,000. So I'm going to guess we've probably spent a total of $50,000 on this season.

• We were lucky enough to get $15,000 from Bristol-Myers Squibb this year, but the rest of our costs have come out of pocket or through fundraising. I know the team currently owes my advisor over $4000. My family is owed almost $1000, and I'm sure the other two major families of mentors are owed similarly so.

• One of our most successful fundraisers has been outreach in front of stores like WalMart & ShopRite. We let the kids in the community drive our 05 robot and win a prize for popping a balloon. It's definitely gotten the community inspired, and helped us out. We've made $400+ each time we've done this fundraiser both by donations & this robot game. The best part about fundraising with WalMart is their store will match up to $1000 from your fundraiser!

• Also, we attend our local fairs/celebrations and do outreach & food sales. This typically brings in about $300 at each event.

• Like everyone, we do car washes - around $250 for each car wash. We do this by donation, only. People tend to give us $10-$15 a car. We've found we make more money than setting a certain price.

• Oh, and who can forget the infamous bake sales. Even if it means buying cookies from ShopRite and selling them with your team name on them, it's still a profit! Most of our parents are glad to bake for us, and Dhaval's brownies are always big sellers! We tend to bring in around $150 at each one.

• This year we have started doing dinners at Friday's. We get pick a date and advertise it around town and in the school. Then at the time & date we pick, anyone that comes to Friday's, says they're here for Robotics, ends up donating 20% of their check to the team. We made over $300 at our first one!

• We have also in the past done a leaf-raking fundraiser. Obviously, this one is seasonal. We spend the day wandering around Hightstown and asking people if we can rake their yards. We usually make about $200 this way.

• My favorite fundraiser that 1089 puts on is BLAH (Bowling Lock-In at Hightstown). We basically hold a bowling/sleepover at our local alley and invite other teams to participate. It became a great way to develop relationships with other FIRST students & mentors. We didn't make a lot of money last year (read: hardly any), but the community growth made it well worth it. Expect to see one again in the near future!

• Lastly, we're planning a spaghetti dinner for this year. Having a slideshow presentation and the robot being demoed or at least on display will be a big selling point at this dinner. Tell everyone in both the FIRST community and your local community about the dinner, sell tickets in advance and at the door! 56 did great with this last year, and I know Kathie K put out a great whitepaper about spaghetti dinners just recently.

So, even with a lack of "donated" funds, team 1089 has managed to cover the majority of our costs. Granted, we're still paying $400/person to go to Atlanta, but maybe that's just the cost of participation!

Sorry this post is so long, but I had to jam a lot of information in here!
Moral of the story: You can do anything as long as you set your mind to it!