You wanna' park?- pay the robotics team!

[Wayne C.]

Hey guys-

I talked to somebody last year about the fundraiser idea of having the FIRST team sell the high school parking tags to students as an annual event. Purely out of the blue the topic came up at a staff meeting and my team has the possibility of doing just this. My principal would like to learn more about how other FIRST teams handle this- sooooo... anybody have information? A contact would be great.

Thanks

Wayne C.

[mnkysp6353]

My school sells the tags for 25 dollars and you are required to have one if you want to park in the lot or else the police ticket you. There is no problem with selling these the school makes alot of money. Any other questions just email me.

[Tom Fairchild]

Good idea! I know personally our school takes in all the profits from parking - and they definitly don't spend it on upkeep! If you can con yours into giving you the profits, it sounds like you definitly have a good fundraiser for you. How big is your high school? Mine only has 800 students and only enough room for parking the seniors. Other schools in the area though have 2000+ kids with tons of room for parking.

~Tom~, who's friend had to pay 100 bucks to park at her school.

[David Kelly]

our school of 1700 students sells parking tags for $25 every year. the money is supposed to go to the new color security cameras that they put in the parking lot. they are security cameras that nobody watches to see what happens because when something happens, they can never seem to find out who busted a car. there would be NOOOO way that we could con our school to give us the $$cash money$$

[mnkysp6353]

Our school spends the money earned on these new security carts. like golf carts. They bought four even though our campus is pretty small. What a waste they should invest it in ROBOTICS !

[Shelley_delphi chick]

I never even thought to aska bout that as a fundraiser....... Sweet......I should look into it though. We hold fundraiser concerts with local bands and raffle stuff off.......sub sales......friday night football games, glow sticks......... guessing jar.......we do a bunch of stuff!! Does anyone else have any more ideas about making money for FIRST teams??


Shelley

[Jay Lundy]

Originally posted by mnkysp6353
Our school spends the money earned on these new security carts. like golf carts. They bought four even though our campus is pretty small. What a waste they should invest it in ROBOTICS !

There are a ton of those at our school! A lot of the administration and the janitors use them. Some of the people on the administration even bought these really cool looking golf carts, they look like the sports car equivalent of a golf cart.

[Wayne C.]

From the responses above it sounds like you guys are looking to do some fundraising. If that's the case take a little advice

1. if you fund raise you can either sell lots of little items (candy bars) for small profits or sell a few large items for bigger profits. In my group we go for the latter. The sales are a little harder but you waste less time and have less administrative hassles.

2. Booster ad books and sponsor donations are essentially free to the team. Don't be afraid to ask a business for a larger sum and try to have a definite goal the funds will go for (for example: every $700 raised sends one needy kid to the nationals). Always thank the donor with an "official" letter from the team and school- preferably within the corporate year for their tax purposes. Last year we got nearly $4000 in sales of ads to the local community.

3. Service type fundraisers are also essentially free and allow kids to earn their way. I've seen lots of neat ideas on the forum in the past few years. We like the car wash idea- one day- everybody works- an easy $1000 for the team.

4. Generally fund raising in the community works better than fundraising in the school. Kids don't spend too much and teachers are ALWAYS hit up for fund raisers by the kids. Mom and Dad are a better source of friends for fundraiser sales. And if the fund raising doesn't come through they are right there with you when it times to pay the way to Fla! He he.

Our corporate sponsor BMS gives us a nice stipend each year but we roughly match them for funding our travel expenses. Last year my 20 or so team members brought in nearly $14,000 on their own. I'm proud of our efforts.
I'd be happy to talk ideas with anyone who wants to. Posting your original ideas here might be good for everybody.

WC $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$- I wish......

[Kyle Gilbert]

You guys have to pay $25+ to park at your school?!? we dont have to pay a cent to park in our parking lots, plus we have plenty of room for anybody to park, not just seniors....

I'm wondering why our school doesnt do that though, it would be a great way to make tons of money, instead of bumping the coke/candy machines up $0.10 every other month...lol

Kyle

[gniticxe]

Wow, my school, which will remain nameless, charges $125/year! At a school with 1600 students, with plenty of parking lot space for juniors and seniors (obviously ~800 students), they're rackin' in the dough. Before reading this thread, I didn't think that to be out of the ordinary, unfair: yes, unordinary: no. They claim it goes to the parking lot security (rent-a-cops) but I'm sure the money more than covers it. Even a better reason to go into school admins and ask for parking lot money when they're charging 5x of what other schools do!
Good Luck to everyone in this year's fundraising efforts!

[Carolyn Duncan]

My high school, in Va, charged 10 dollars my junior year and 20 my senior year. Those were the first two years there was a parking fee. My freshman year was the first year the school was open. The parking lot is small and there isnt enough parking. They even went as far as to number places and tow cars not in the proper place. They would never give up any of the money they earned off parking passes. Some of the passes were only good for a single sport season or a semester. They raked in the dough. We were able to get two passes alotted to our club woohoo! I wish we could have used that as a fund raiser... It would have been great. Maybe it will work at the school were I am mentoring... I should find out.

[Mike Schroeder]

Yea thats a great idea (what kind of team did i Join)

[Shelley_delphi chick]

Our school has assigned parking spots and they are numbered as well, but it's not for the prupose of money rather for people skipping classes. I go to an inner city school where we don't meet Ohio's attendance pecentage, so the board has come up with this idea. We only have to pay ten dollar a year and the parking places are seniors first and then juniors and thensophmores and freshman that drive......yes, we have freshman that should be seniors......not something to be proud of, but hey it's the truth.


Shelley



p.s. we also send out letters to corperations in the community and get sponcership money. Their logos get put on our robot!!

[Vin211]

Our team, 237, has been doing parking for nearly 4 years now and yes its a very good fundraiser. We have several locations around the school including a paved or unpaved parking spots. We charge $15 for the paved spots and $10 for the unpaved spots. But kids still feel that they do not have to pay because they believe parking should be free. For these rebelious students we immobilize their cars charging them a larger fee to remove the boot. Throughout the years we've grown smarter with the way we administer the parking priviledges and we're still collecting money from those that haven't paid for their spots.

[Matt Attallah]

Good Idea!!! Our school didn't do parking tags until this year, and they are $5 each. Hey, that matches our team number... But anyways, that is a good idea! Wouldn't it be a little late now, considering it being well in to the school year?? Mabye an idea for next year?!?!