So we need to do more fundraising and outreach and we thought a good place to get sponsors was to display them somewhere. But we just got shirts like 2 years ago so we don’t want to reprint them all to include sponsors. Same with our pit banner. What are some creative ways to recognize your sponsor? Right now we’re leaning towards putting a sign on the bot (if we can) and putting their link on our website.
Does your team have social media? Give them shout outs there. Robot signs are a good idea, as well as a sign in your pit. Definitely include their logo and link on your website.
Whatever you do, document it with pictures and screenshots to include in a thank you letter at the end of the season to let them know how you represented them in the community.
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Apart from putting logos on t-shirts each year, we also cut out stickers of our sponsors’ logos and put them on the robot somewhere visible (for example this year we put them on a piece of polycarbonate in front of our climbing arm and on our intake). Another way to display sponsors is through social media, robot reveal videos, and through your team website.
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3128 does a couple sponsor tiers to avoid like you mention needing to get a new pit banner each year. We do order shirts every year and as sponsor tiers go up, logos are displayed more prominently on said shirt. Otherwise, we haven’t ever missed having a sponsor panel on the robot since I’ve been a student and the same sizing criteria apply (bigger logo = bigger funding received). Here are some of the ones we’ve come up with:
2017, arguably my favorite but I’m bias to LEDs
2018
2018, not the biggest fan since all the logos were on a white background.
And 2019, which also included the robot name
The San Diego Legion rugby team was our title sponsor so they got pretty big real estate on the panel.
Finally, my senior year, we started doing sponsor highlights on our Instagram. Depending on the sponsor tier, we also send swag bags/gift baskets/offer to demo our robot as a token of appreciation.
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I’ve heard some sponsors announced when a robots name is announced. Is this only for rookies teams (for example I heard Nasa) or could we ask the organizers to have this done? On the other hand this might be a little obnoxious so it wouldn’t be a loss if we couldn’t.
It’s actually a lot easier than you think.
Just gotta list the sponsors on TIMS. See, FIRST counts the sponsors and school(s) as your team name, with the name you usually think of actually being the team nickname.
MCs and GAs read off part of the team name on a regular basis.
Is TIMS your team name on the first website?
It’s the Team Information Management System. Your lead mentor would be the one logging in to change stuff. I don’t know exactly which field(s) they’d change, but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
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Thank you!
Seconding this point, I’m not sure this is an every regional thing and it seems to depend on the MC/GA but I recall in 2018 at Idaho being asked our sponsor list at our pit and rattling off an updated spiel. Most events definitely seem to go by what’s inputted in TIMS though 
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