The Dirty Birds need your help! On Monday December 1, 2003 we lost our corporate sponsors. The 2 companies have been sponsoring us for the last 6 years with financial and engineer help. The companies cited that they felt our school district did not show enough support to our team. We feel this is bogus, as we get a lot of support from our school, the problem is that they wanted a classroom dedicated to FIRST, Robotics to be integrated into the curriculum, and they felt the code of conduct that is expected from students was not up to their standards.
We are looking for advice from teams as to how many of you have all of the stuff that I listed above. We think these cmpanies are asking for stuff that really cannot be done.
We as a team were stunned by this considering they waited to tell us 4 days before payment was due to compete that they wouldn’t be paying our registration fees. But don’t worry, our school (who they felt wasn’t supportive) helped us secure money for the registration, we just have to do a lot more fundraising then we planned.
We are a team that will be building a robot without any mentors (a few parents stepped up and are going to help), and wanted to know if any of you out there have any advice for us on how to build with only students and a school. We will be participating in the BAE regional.
Thanks for listening, and please pass on any advice you have for us.
Best advice is keep it simple. Look for help from machine shops, farmers etc if you need to but past experiences and your old robots should give you plenty of ideas for mechanisms.
We build our robots with a drill press and a band saw. The students do the majority of the work. Only our gearboxes are fabricated by machinists (and myself, a lowly engineer).
This year we may have more help but we have had only myself, a couple parents and the teachers involved in FIRST. The principal is big supporter but the tech dept is not.
We spend only about $1500 on the robot mostly for gears and sprockets. We purchase most items from Motion Industries and McMaster-Carr.
We have no large sponsor, many small ones.
Good Luck, feel free to contact me if you would like more info.
Andy Brockway
Team 716, The Who’sCTEKS
Sorry to hear of your dilemma. It’s great to have a supportive school district and it sounds as if you have the spirit to carry out the mission of FIRST in spite of the difficulty.
We are also fortunate at Palisades High School to have building and district support and, because of FIRST, have robotics and animation courses in our school’s curriculum. Three teachers (including myself) are team advisors. All of this came about over years of involvement and building relationships, etc. We would be glad to share our curriculum outlines and info if you feel they would help in the future.
However, it’s important to know that Team 103’s work is an after school activity and these courses in robotics and animation are open to all PHS students - many team members take the courses to build their team skills, but it is not required. Equally, these courses were developed over time by our teacher advisors as a way to reach students beyond the team with this leading edge instruction. Without FIRST (and our district and sponsors), there is no way we would have had access to the software, equipment, and materials to make it happen. So, for us, the evolution was 100% education driven.
Email me at [email protected] with your request and we will get something to you as soon as we can. Good luck.
you can try to send emails to local big comanies… and let them know about your team… i am pretty sure that they would like to help you out…
and about help from engineers i am not really sure…
While I can Identify with you (We still have large financial needs), have you actually tried getting any of the things they requested? Obviously it is too late to start a class this year, but if you tell them you can have it ready for next year and show an honest attempt, they may keep you sponsored.
Although I feel it was kind of short notice to cut your budget, it is their right. Companies participate to promote education and to better the community. A FIRST Partnership must be mutual for it to be successful; the company and the school must work hand in hand towards a common goal. If your team doesn’t fit their education plan, it is not fair to them for you to simply say that it is impossible to meet their requirements and cite the number of teams that don’t meet that demands, bogus or not.
I am not sure about this one… So far my experience with FIRST suggests the opposite is true. Unless you have a contact inside a company (like a parent), it is nearly impossible to get sponsored. All these wonderfully composed emails are deleted along with the spam and never even read. I spent a month emailing companies and havent received a single reply.
Email is extremely impersonal. A phone call is a much more human way of communicating and people are more likely to respond to your enthusiasm. It is important to remember that even now when technology becomes more advanced every day, people still appreciate a human voice and hand shake over an array of text on a computer screen.
We usually do one better than a phone call… we actually send people to the businesses, while there really is no big company in town, it is the small places that sometimes make the biggest difference. Just because you think you have no engineer doesent mean you dont have a pratical one. From what I have seen sometimes machenists, welders, and others that actually build things every day for a living come up with better ideas, usually much simpler and work better than what some engineers come up with. Partner with the local hardware stores, metal supply houses, ect. If anyone has ever seen the back of our shirts they know who our sponsors are, there are about 20 different logos of most of the businesses that sponsor us, including the Grundy wemens club, Family drug pharmacy, Pal’s Electric shop, Ect. None of which are what you would call big businesses, all businesses are usually owned by 1 or 2 people. Yet from all theise supporters we are able to pay for each year, also with our team, the student has to have $0 to participate, the team pays for all food, lodging, ect. That way economic background isnt a restriction on the student. Evean if the student needs a ride to every meeting, we arrange somthing anyone that is willing to put in their time and participate is allowed on the team and gets just as much of a chance as someone that has all the money in the world and a limo to take them everywhere. Sometimes its nice to put stuff like that behind you and finally be on a level playing field with your peers, thats something that many kids never get to experance.
Sorry for the tangent/rant.
i agree… i know that we got our first sponsor with a phone call and a follow-up letter in the mail explaining more in detail. we would have given a presentation, but they agreed pretty quickly, and there isnt much for us to present.
you’re obviously not a rookie team, so that puts you one up on all of us rookie teams in the sense that you can go and make a presentation and show your accomplishments from the previous years and the success and progress of your team.
good luck …
Hey,
Its sad that your 2 prime sponsors left you. Now some of the demands might be a out of way, tho i am pretty sure you are great competitors and will come up with a way to go through this setback.
Though i will say that correspondence with companies is very important, now you can send e-mailes which is very simple, or faxes, or a phone call for more impact. Jus keep it simple and professional and tell the sponsors or companies your needs upfront. Like if you goto a big company dont go and ask $200. If they are interested go to them, give them a small presentation and say “Hey, we need to do this competition and we need $2000 or what evver from you and these are the benefits you get”. And also have a budget so they know where their money is going to go.
A big pointer the advertisement your sponsors get form you should be based on the money the provide, so if someone give $200 they shouldnt get a logo as big as the one who gave $2000.
Though my experience suggests its all about being at the right place at the right time.
I hope you benefited from the above giberish 
Regards,
Abdullah Ramay
Team Leader
Thank You all for your advice. Since I last wrote, we have had a huge outpouring from the engineers that have worked with us in the past, most of our engineers still want to help even tho their companies have pulled out. BTW, I found out that the decision to pull our funding was made by a few engineers, who wanted to try to put pressure on our school. They thought if they pulled funding our team would crumble and no longer be. They wanted us to come running back with all of their demands met. We have been trying for 4 years to do what they have asked, but there is no way for it to happen. We have over 1700 students, you all know how school budgets work, We can’t justify adding robotics as a class and paying a teachers salary for it when we need teachers in other areas. The school budget is so tight! As far as a classroom, our school does accomidate us during build season, again we can’t justify using a classroom for only 6 weeks a year and then having it empty the rest of the year. We have teachers here who don’t have a permanate classroom, they “float” from class to class. And as far as disipline, that should be left up to the school, the students need to follow school rules. If they don’t then they should be disiplined according to school policy. I think once we know what this years design will be will determine how much money we need to raise. Our comunity has been very supportive, I know when we put the call for help out they will support us.
Thanks again for all your advice!
First let me start by saying that the team i belong to (134) has never really had a big sponsor. We have to fundraise year round. This is no easy task. One of the many things our team has learned to do well in the past few years is to write grants. Keep in mind though that no grant is a guarentee.
As for engineering there is no better way to learn how to do it than to do it.
We work by using simple hand tools and a drill press or two. We operate through build season strictly under the guidance of parents(only one of which is and engineer) and a teacher. The only space we have to work in is two classrooms and a closet the size of a bathroom.
I also feel that by having less engineering it helps bring our team closer together and create a better atmosphere.
Believe it or not FIRST is integrated into the class room. Granted you may not have a class called FIRST Robotics 101 but your school might have a wood shop class or a CAD class. Some schools offer computer science courses. My school offers a web page design class. You don’t necessarily have to be working only on FIRST stuff to be doing FIRST. Courses like these prepare you to apply certian things to FIRST.
Keep an open mind and work hard. Things can happen unexpectedly and you will remain competitive.
-Pat
P.S.–>We have been able to remain competetive winning two regionals and coming in as a runner up at a few more under these circumstances
At our school we’ve recently started classes involved in Project Lead the Way (http://www.pltw.org/). Over the next few years, we’ll add a class every year that focuses on engineering or other related subjects. Eventually the robotics team will be incorporated and robotics will actually be a class at our school, but this will be after my time. That’s a way to do it over the long run if your school isn’t really wanted to just create a class for the next year.
Fundwise - Start fundraising as much as possible now. One idea is selling pieces of duct tape and getting a teacher to volunteer to be taped to the wall for your team. Students wouldn’t mind paying a dollar to see their teacher taped to the wall 
If you need tips with saving money travel wise, PM me and I can get you in touch with a teacher on our team who knows his stuff.
Hope that helped some.
This may not be the disaster that it first appears to be… it’s fantastic that you guys did have corporate sponsors - shows that you were able to get some of the larger corporations interested in FIRST and the students involved - so congrats on that. However, it’s possible to get by without corporate sponsors - and sometimes, i think it might even be better that way. Last year I was on Grundy’s team, team 388. 388 has never had a large corporate sponsor, and although it’s something that theyve worked hard at trying to attain, it’s almost impossible to do so given the location and economic situation of the town. 388 even had to sit out one year due to politics and finances, but got back into it stronger than ever last year. We spent the majority of the year funraising, going personally from business to business until we’d hit almost every business in town - and whether their donation was $5, $50 or $500, there werent too many places that could turn us down, and every little bit counts. We applied for grants, did car washes, garage sales, and i think that all the work we’d done fundraising pre-season, made our team so much stronger because we’d been working so hard together months before the comp even began. It weeds out the people who are only in it for the trips and the building - because by the time you even get to build season most of them have already quit, not willing to put in the hard work but wanting the rewards. By the time kickoff came, we had a solid team of dedicated students, teachers, and mentors, and we’d already become like family because we’d put in so many hours.
I think the harder you work for something, the more you appreciate it, and it only makes the competition sweeter in the end. as justin said before, our team doesnt just fundraise to build the robot, we fundraise for the teams accomodation, travelling expenses, meals, tshirts - everything. The team puts in the hours, and no one gets left behind. we cant do much for our sponsors to thank them, but every last one gets put onto the back of our shirt - although sometimes its hard to fit them all on there - and we wear those shirts proudly, its our way of showing our appreciation, our shirts show how strong our community is - their support is phenominal.
its hard work, but its not impossible…keep optimistic…losing your corporate sponsor might just be the best thing that has happened to your team - you never know. these things happen for a reason. goodluck this year, make the most of it