Rapid Fundraising Ideas.

[Dan Richardson]

Every year teams struggle with fund raising, its part of the FIRST challenge, not only to come up with a competitive robot, inspire the engineers of tomorrow but also to raise funds to do all of the above.

My Team 1902 this year has especially struggled with raising funds this year. The team was started 1 week before kickoff we've done all that we can to raise enough money to register, build a robot and travel. We've had some success with what we've been able to do and have qualified for nationals via winning the Rookie All-Star award at the Florida Regional. The team would like to attend and we've been doing all we can to raise the money in time but we still seem to be falling short. I realize that this problem is not unique to my team and thats why I'm asking have any teams been able to raise large sums of money in short periods of times, and what have they done to raise it?

I know 418 at Lone Star gave us the idea of contacting local News Stations and seeing if they will run a story on us allowing us to ask for donations. We are in contact with them and seeing if they are willing to work with us.

We understand its a steep challenge to meet but there are other teams in the same boat ( Team 1745 the Lone Star Rookie All-Star comes to mind ) trying to rapidly raise money to attend the national competition. So what have other teams done to raise money in a short period of time? Any ideas will help.