GM and its impact on FIRST

[Raumiester2010]

GM going bankrupt will hurt a lot of teams, as has been speculated.
Our story (as its the only one I am qualified to tell) is that GM has been a Great and Faithful sponsor for years. They have given us
1) money (drastically reduced over the past few years),

2) our home (a amazing amount of space for our machine shop and partial practice field, in a shop that is going to be shut down by the end of June...),

3) our Mentors (a Great bunch of people that are more like friends than teachers, even though they have taught us a huge amount of information. a dedicated group of GM engineers that have been with the team for about 10 years), and

4) just all sorts of help

I will be sad to see GM go but we will survive.

For us, we have been earning WAY more than GM has been giving us the past few years. If you ever go to the Michigan Renaissance Festival, we cook the Turkey Legs, its hot, greasy, smoky, dirty, and tiring but we earn $22,850- it is most of our budget.

It is possible to live without the Big sponsors, it just takes a lot of fund raising and hard work...