We Need A Sponsor!

If there is anyone out there at all that can help please e-mail me. My team, Rhode Warrior has been partnered with a division of the Navy for all 8 years of our participation. Because they are funded by the government however, we cannot recieve any funding from them. Every year we struggle to sustain our team financially and for the past 8 years we have had no success as there are not very many engineering companies in Rhode Island. We are a relatively successful team, we have an award of some sort from every year of our participation, so if anyone out theres knowns of anyone looking to sponsor a team financially please have them contact us.
As of right now we can't even afford to go to Florida.


I know my team is not the only one in this situation. I'm hoping this thread can get some contacts flowing and help every sponsor lacking team out.

Becky

[AdamT]

Shoot, help us too. We were promised 20k by a company and didn't get a dime. We've worked quite hard to get enough to finish the robot. Money....ugg.

[Wayne C.]

to both of you-

Did you try contacting and following up with your local chamber of commerce? mayor's office? state dept of ed? congressman? newspapers?

Persistently talking to these sources should turn up someone. Dersignating a part of the team to take on the job during the off season might be the way to go.

All teams have funding problems. Very few have money to give away.


My $.02
WC

[dlavery]

Originally posted by SharkBite
My team, Rhode Warrior has been partnered with a division of the Navy for all 8 years of our participation. Because they are funded by the government however, we cannot recieve any funding from them.

Huh?!?? Becky, I am not sure what you have been told, but there must be more to the story. There is no prohibition against teams being funded by government sources, either by FIRST or the government.

FIRST has a long history of government-sponsored and government-funded teams partcipating in the competition. NASA, US Army, US Army Aberdeen Proving Grounds, US Coast Guard, US Department of Energy, Sandia National Labs, US Naval Academy, US Naval Research Lab, David Taylor Naval Research Laboratory, etc. have all sponsored and funded teams, and they are all federal government sources. Beyond that, there are even more teams that have received local and state government support.

Your Navy sponsors may be running into problems with the Dept of Defense procurement system, which is notoriously arcane, and may not have found a way to get funding through the system and to your team. If that is the case, please feel free to have them contact me, and I will be glad to share the paperwork and justification we used to navigate through the NASA procurement system for the past several years (we have obviously been successful at this, as this year NASA is providing partial or full funding support to nearly 200 teams). I also have contacts with a few of the other Navy-sponsored teams, and they may be able to help even more.


-dave


Just a gentle reminder that every now and then the phrase "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" is not a joke.

i dont know if its a rule or not, i just know the specific division we work with is legally unable to fund us....... they can only provide us with talented and dedicated engineers

you can always try with the paperwork, but i would be suprised if nobody has by now

[junkyarddawg]

Sharkbite:

The money is there, you just need to ask the right person in the right way. I'm an engineer and I do not work that challenge of our team. But, contact team #288 the Grandville Highschool RoboDawgs and someone will give you the right information on raising money. they have an exceptional program for making presentations to potential sponsers and recognizing the entities that sponser the RobDawgs.

"It is never to late to start"

Tim Gates