1983 Needs Help Quickly

[FourTwoNineZero]

Hello,

We are rookie team 1983 and we are in dire need of funding for the championship in Atlanta. We received the imagery award at the Pacific Northwest Regional in Portland, the Rookie Allstar Award in Las Vegas and won the Las Vegas Regional. We are double qualified to attend the FIRST Championship in Atlanta, but we are very short on funds and only have a few days to raise over $20,000 and tell FIRST if we are able to attend.

If you or anyone you know (such as your team, neighbors, friends, businesses, etc) would be willing to support us, we would be much humbled by your gracious professionalism. Any and all help is appreciated.

Thank you for your gracious professionalism and good luck to all.

—Team 1983

[Rachel M]

we had some money and we werent able to qualify to go. Congradulations on winning all those awards and the competition as a rookie team. You deffinitly deserve to go. I will talk to me team as soon as I can and see if we can help you get some money.

[Dan Petrovic]

Pick a day to go around to any local businesses. Explain the situation and ask for some financial support. I'm sure companies will be more willing to give funding to teams who have actually earned the right to go to Atlanta than those who really haven't.

One thing we've found to be successful is what we call "tagging". It involves sitting in front of a local grociery store and asking for small donations. Students spend the morning at a table with lolly-pops with stickers we had printed out and a bucket for cash.
We would make 600-700 dollars.

[Kevin Sevcik]

$20K sounds like a lot. I know $5000 of it is registration, but still. 57 was planning to spend about $8K for traveling and food plus the $5K for registration. We manage this by taking as small a group as we can. So your fundraising might be more successful if you start with a smaller goal and if you reach that, then you can aim for the larger goal.

[Zach Wydick]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

$20K sounds like a lot. I know $5000 of it is registration, but still. 57 was planning to spend about $8K for traveling and food plus the $5K for registration. We manage this by taking as small a group as we can. So your fundraising might be more successful if you start with a smaller goal and if you reach that, then you can aim for the larger goal.

It may be easier for you since your team is in Texas, but we are in Washington, and airfare is a lot more expensive to go due to the fact that we are farther away and we have little time. We are consolidating as much as we can with our team and taking only the essentials, but as my teammate has said up above, there is only so much we can do. Thank you for your ideas in advance.

-Zach Wydick
Team 1983 President/Human Player

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Zach Wydick

It may be easier for you since your team is in Texas, but we are in Washington, and airfare is a lot more expensive to go due to the fact that we are farther away and we have little time. We are consolidating as much as we can with our team and taking only the essentials, but as my teammate has said up above, there is only so much we can do. Thank you for your ideas in advance.

-Zach Wydick
Team 1983 President/Human Player

Sorry, hadn't looked enough to see that airfare is twice as expensive for you guys. Our team doesn't have enough funding in our usual budget to travel to championships either. However, if we earn our right to enter, we can usually make arrangements with our school district and sponsors to give enough extra money to send our team. You might try approaching your school administration about it.

[Zach Wydick]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Sorry, hadn't looked enough to see that airfare is twice as expensive for you guys. Our team doesn't have enough funding in our usual budget to travel to championships either. However, if we earn our right to enter, we can usually make arrangements with our school district and sponsors to give enough extra money to send our team. You might try approaching your school administration about it.

No worries. Thanks for the advice, we'll try that. Does anyone else have any other ideas?

-Zach Wydick
Team 1983 President/Human Player

[triggerhappy336]

Do you guys have a major sponsor? We went threw the same thing about 3 weeks ago. What ended up happening is one of the parents went to regionals, loved the program, and being the President of the company, got the parent company called Alstom to sponsor us. They're big in the train world. Xerox also gave or loaned us a large sum of money for Atlanta. Start talking to companys. It's the only way in a short period of time where your going to get the money. You can fundraise and earn it all back later.

[Branden Gee]

unfortunately we have no major sponsors, and everything has been mostly done by parent sponsorship as well as smaller donations from some companys.

Thank you for your time

-Team 1983

[SSMike]

This may be a long shot but if you were able to ask a local Congressperson (you're located in D.C. right?) but maybe they will have some ideas. It might be a little easier because of Dean's "homework" this year. I know that it is nearly impossible but hey, you built a robot in 6 weeks, so you can do anything. Sorry if this doesn't help. Good Luck! Hope to see you in Atlanta.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by SSMike

This may be a long shot but if you were able to ask a local Congressperson (you're located in D.C. right?) but maybe they will have some ideas....

Seems like Easterners forget about Washington being the name of a state (as well as the national capital). They're in Seattle, Washington, not Washington, D.C.

[SBass]

Hey I'm from error code. Our team is trying to find funding as well, though most of it will come out of pocket, unfortunately for our parents. Hopefully this week we can go around to local businesses and be like.. hey.. we won, could you do us a huge favor and sponsor us last minute? Plane tickets are so expensive (my family even opted to drive to vegas from portland, whew) and ditto for all the hotel / food / other spending. And if the going around to local businesses for last minute sponsorship doesnt work, I would try a community fundraiser, like a carwash or something? Though that doesn't get $20k...

Anyway, best of luck to you, you were awesome at the competitions, you deserve to go to atlanta so much! Though if you don't get to go, you can always start funding for next year!

[Zach Wydick]

Thanks SBass and we hope to see you guys at nationals!

[1359th Scalawag]

One fundraising idea that, theoretically, our team was thinking of using to get a quick $23,000 was to go to the Chamber of Commerce and get a list of businesses from them. With 230 something businesses in our town, if we could get each of them to just donate 100$ then that's $23,000. With the awards you guys got, it shouldn't be too hard to get that much money!

[Zach Wydick]

Thank you all so much for your advice. It was just confirmed a couple of minutes ago that our PTSA gave us $10,000! This cuts the cost drastically, enough that our entire team can afford to chip in the rest. Thanks for the advice and good luck teams!

-Zach Wydick
Team 1983 President/Human Player