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.

[Gabe]

First off, try going door to door in your neighborhood. It worked for us and we raised $500 that way.
Next on the list, is there a Starbucks nearby? They were really friendly to us and we did a demo there and it helped with another couple hundred.
Ask family for donations. They will understand that you did not expect to do so well and need emergency funding.
Ask your school for a donation in the order of $1,000 to $1,500, which I think is reasonable. Do not as for too much from your school or they will say no.
Set up a dollar-for-dollar challenge with a company that you know is friendly toward you. The way it works is that you raise, say, $1,500. Then the friendly company promises to match that amount.
Now comes a very delicate arrangement for raising money. Ask one or two individuals to finance the trip to Nationals for this time, with the understanding that you will repay every single penny back after you return from your trip. The reason why this is so delicate is that this person has to trust that the $5,000 to $10,000 from their savings account will most definately be paid back. There are people out there (most likely a wealthy family member) that will do this, but only if they believe you when you tell him/her that they will be reimbursed.

Our team knows your plight all too well. Last year we were a new group of friends who went to the Pacific Northwest regional in Portland, and had no idea that we were going to win first place. So in the same time that you have now, we had to raise the same amount of funds to get to Atlanta.
I hope you do well at Nationals because from all the posts at ChiefDelphi, you are an excellent team!

[DaveA412]

my team is in the same situation and we will end up going door to door soon we are thinking of a possible raffle of some sort maybe buy an ipod and charge 50 cents a ticket im sure we can get 1 or 2 hundred bucks profit from that even gift cards local resturaunts might want the tax write off try the family and friends if u know any resturaunt owners set up donation box or boxes just try everything possible and u will get there thats what im hoping for us and ill be expecting to make sure you guys made it so ill look for you at nationals

[Ian Curtis]

Write letters. Make a form letter telling about your team, how you won, why its so important that you go, etc.. Instruct every member of your team to bring in a list of 20 adresses of friends, family, co-workers of parents, etc.. Send the letter along with a short personalized note from the sender to everyone on the list. It really works. We made nearly a 1/3 of our goal with this one idea.

[JoelP]

1155 is in a similar situation, we qualified for nat's with the Engineering Inspiration award but had almost no money left in our budget after our Regional.

To raise money we've been asking friends and family for donations, organizing bake sales at school, selling team t-shirts, selling candy, appealing to the school, the Parents Association and the Alumni Association. We've also sent out presentation packets to over 30 companies and businesses containing information about our team, our accomplishments, what we do for the school and for the community, as well as our budget for the championships so the companies have an idea of how much money we need to raise.

Pretty much what we've done is appeal to as many sources for funding as we possibly can. Remember, its easier to raise $10,000 for example, with 10 $1000 donations or even 20 $500 ones rather than 1 big donation. So try to contact as many sources as possible, the worst that can happen is that they'll say no.

[Ashley Weed]

Team 84 recently did a Domino's Card Fundraiser. Check your local Domino's before you get too excited because I tried using mine at different locations and was denied. However, I think this is a FABULOUS idea if you can find a participating Domino's.

1. Team bought a whole "bunch" of Domino's cards that were $1 each.
2. The cost for the team was $1 per card paid to Domino's; however, the resale value stamped on the card was $10.
3. The team then makes $9 off of every card sold.
4. Individual buys Domino's card for $10. For every large pizza they purchase (with the use of the card), they receive one large pizza free. The cost of a large Pizza from Domino's is $10. The card comes with "20 Pizza Punches" for "20 Free Pizzas".

Hope this isn't too confusing, and I hope I explained it correctly.

Good Luck

[newton418]

A thought for next year...

This may sound silly but hear me out.

For another extra-curricular, I helped sell mistletoe right before Christmas. We brought a table, some pictures, and a description of what we do and set up in front of an upper scale, local hardware store. We gave away mistletoe and explained what we did to anyone willing to listen. We then accepted donations, whatever the individual felt inclined to give – if they wanted to. We did this at two locations for two weeks, with two three-hour shifts per day (except Sundays). Though it sounds like a lot of time, it really isn’t; only two or three people need to be there at any given time, plus it cost us nothing since we cut the mistletoe down ourselves. By the end we ended up raising somewhere around $2,500, which surprised everyone.

This might not work for you, but if you can find a good location, it might end up raising a lot more than you expect.

[JC-75]

A cool idea, though it might take a few weeks, is to ask a local supermarket if they sell gift cards and would be willing to give you 5% or 10% if you go to neighbors and sell gift certificates. The good thing about this is people will go to places like shoprite anyway, rather than selling something that people will buy JUST because it's a fundrasier.

[Rohith Surampudi]

Sponsors/ Donations, our team does alot of fundraising thorugh donations from local buisnesses. Most companies as long as they are small enough will cut you a check within a day or two of your request. The larger buisnesses, have higher rejection rates, and require long proposels, but they have the highest success rate. If you need any help with what to say or stuff of that nature just PM me or send me an IM: rvssnake . id be happy to help you out

[KenWittlief]

A relatively quick way to raise money is to have an ebay garage sale.

Get people to donate stuff to sell on ebay - there are tons of stuff that you cant give away at a neighborhood garage sale that someone on the other side of the country has been looking for and will pay top $$$.

You can find the value of stuff by searching the ebay completed listings to see what similar objects have sold for in the past month. This way you can see that a 1963 Donald Duck Pez dispenser is worth $400, but a Mickey Mouse Weeble from 1981 is only selling for 25¢, and choose what to list and what to politely return to the donor.

Have an ebay posting party, take photos, write up descriptions, and try to post all the listings onto one account in one afternoon. Be sure include in the listings "All proceeds goto SoandSo HS FIRST robotics team ......."

A week later all the auctions will close - have another ebay party - you cant believe how much fun it is to watch your listings prices rise at the last few minutes.

If you ask people to pay through Paypal only, you can get the funds in a few days, box everything up and ship it out - so you could do this in 2 or 3 days over about a two week period.

PS - have an award (prize) for the person who donates the item that ends up with the highest sell price!

[kaszeta]

One fundraiser that has worked well for my team, especially since we are the only team in our immediate geographic area:

1. Get a pair of really good sporting tickets (for us, that's Red Sox box seats), either donated or bought. We even got a local travel agency (from whom we got the tickets) to kick in a bus from here to Fenway.

2. Sell raffle tickets, both by hoofing it, and by setting up a demo at a local events and such (note: having a CMUcam2 that can track a green light is a cool demo, even if your bot (like the old bot we used at the demo) doesn't do anything useful with it. The "cool factor" is still a draw).

3. Profit.