Attn. Corporate Sponsored Teams:

[Donut]

Definitely try to get your team considered a non-profit group so that sponsors can write the donation off. I think it's alot harder to find the "large" corporate donations you might be looking for without this.

Assemble some kind of sponsorship packet or brochure to present to corporations (I definitely recommend looking at the NEMO White Paper for this, our team just finished one based off of this and everyone who has seen it has been impressed). Then just try to talk to any (or every) corporation you can. You tend to get better results when there is someone connected to your team that is an employee or part of the corporation (parent, mentor, friend of a member's family, etc.), and local ones will probably be more willing to do it, but there's really no harm in trying anyone (unless you're afraid of the word "no").

I would definitely recommend talking to casinos about this. I don't know what they can donate for money, but one of our member's family has a friend who works at a casino in Vegas, and they talked to him about what we do and whatnot. It will depend upon when the Las Vegas Regional is next year, but the friend is pretty sure he can get us 4 or 5 free rooms for the duration of the Regional if we go to Las Vegas next year. I'm guessing with all the members, mentors, and teachers on your team, there's probably someone who knows a person in the casino business.