"These Hard Times"?

[katiyeh07]

Originally Posted by neoshaakti

Today members on my team and I called a lot of local companies and corps. asking to talk to their community relations manager or department; however, we were met by an overwhelming "not interested" or "business has been terrible, we can't donate money at this time". Are other teams running into similar problems?

Is my approach wrong?

I'm not here to gripe about how expensive FIRST is or anything
I'm just here because Im curious if other teams are experiencing similar roadblocks, and whether they've figured out a more effective method to approaching corporations.

You're feedback and thoughts on this are appreciated.

Our team has a few months to raise 6k because in order to apply for the 2nd year grant from NASA, they need to see you've raised 6k from corporate or community grants.( If I am not mistaken...)

Im located in Central NJ, by the way

Thanks

Something we did on my team in high school was we made a pamphlet (Granted our main sponsor, Hamilton helped us out with printing it) and businesses could buy space in the pamphlets to put advertisements. But besides the ad spaces, we had info about our robotics team. There was a page dedicated to each robot that had a list of regionals and offseason we attended and the awards we won for each year. It also had like a description of the team and an explanation of FIRST and how the program works. We made a lot of copies of the pamphlet and handed it out at FIRST events, demos, and other fundraisers we had. And it made us a good amount of money. And it was easy, each kid would bring information with them when they went to go talk to the business and they'd ask at the end if they'd like to buy an add space. So maybe you could give that a try?


Also something that I just thought of after I last visited Clinton and some members of 126. Tim Baird was talking to me about how the local paint your own pottery place does fundraisers for groups like us. You get a bunch of people to go, and you get a portion of the proceeds. I think it's a better more original and fun alternative to the have people go out to eat at this restaurant so you can get a portion of the profit.

Just some ideas

[waialua359]

Over the years, one of our biggest investment towards sustainability is having a Robotics Open House tour during the last week of build season.
Most teams would probably not do this, since they are busy with the robot.

We do this so that the invitees and potential sponsors can see our students in action trying to finish up the robot, programming, testing, etc.

Our students create the program and run the whole show. Sponsors dont want to hear us talk, they want to hear what students have to say and how FIRST is impacting their lives and career choices.

I cant emphasize enough how that has propelled our team in getting larger and larger donations year after year. It leads to partnership type activities that your team and the sponsoring organization can do.