Hi everyone,
I am looking to generate ideas on how to raise money for our team.
Here is what we have thought of so far:
Sending Letters
Bake Sale
Raffles
Selling food at Dances
Fundraising Banquets
Any other ideas or comments would be appreciated!!
Thanks,
Harry
There are lots of ideas in this Fundraising forum. Take a few minutes and look through them and Iâm sure youâll find some ideas that will work for your team.
What kind of funding are you looking for? Major source of financial or in-kind support? Then you will want to create a polished, professional-looking presentation and research area corporations and go down that path. Do you need smaller sources of funding to provide your team with t-shirts, travel expenses, etc.? Then other forms of fundraisers like car washes, pasta dinners, etc. may be more appropriate.
Look in the Chief Delphi CD-Media section for white papers.(This will sound like a broken record to some of you) Check out the NEMO website under Resources for some white papers that might help. Any adult mentor from your team may join NEMO.
Raffles generate hueg profit for little investment. With Valentineâs day coming up, a cute basket should do you some good.
Also, one thing our team does is sell chips and drinks for $.50 each, and that hasbeen generating some nice money from our team.
If youâve got lots of poofs left over from last year, organize a dodgeball tourney. Be creative. Incorporate the 2006 bot, get people at your school excited about robotics. The more people know about it, the more they want to help.
If you go to Fazoliâs (if any are near your team), you can volunteer to serve breadsticks for a night, and you get a profit. Sure, it wonât work during the six weeks, but after⌠You can also sell Krispy Kremes for a fundraiser. During the summer, our team does car washes at the nearest McDonalds. We got around $700 for just one day! Our orchestra had to raise a ton of money, so every student was responsible for making a basket (photograpy, italian, couch potato, Colts, Pacers, whatever you want), and all were auctioned at a starting price of $25 (do the math; a 20 person team means at least $500). Another thing you might want to consider is instead of getting money from sponsors, ask for something that you can put at a silent auction (like a TV or something; we got one for our orchestraâs auction once) or some of your teams items (like a shirt or a piece of CNCâd aluminum with your logo; people will love it!). That way, you can do the fundraising dinner and the auction in one huge, gigantic fundraiser!
Good luck!
Some of our more creative fund raising ideas have been:
A car bash. For this we get a car about to go to a junk yard, bring out a couple sledge hammers, and let students smash the car before our rival football game.
A garage sale. Weâve been allowed to use a parking lot close to a major road, and everybody just brings stuff to sell. This one has really surprised us with the amount of money weâve raised.
Stadium clean up. We sign up to clean part of the UT stadium after a football game. Itâs dirty work, but a consistent source of money, and a good excuse to go swimming as a team afterwards.
1902 Exploding Bacon does a fundraiser called Pig Pen Palooza. We made pigs that look like our mascot and glued them on to PC pipe painted like dynamite all mounted on dowel rods. We have about 2 dozen of them We put them in friends yards after they have gone to sleep and we leave a packet at the door that says, who we are and that our pigs are loose. We include a budget and sponsor levels, and on the packet is a pice list that states how to get the pigs out of your yard. For 20.00 the pig wranglers come and collect the pigs, for 35.00 the pig wranglers come collect the pigs and put them in a yard of your choice, and for 50.00 we do all of the above and you get pig insurance so it can never happen again. The team gets half the money and the person who started the chain gets the other half in their personal account. The idea is to get your name spread around the community from house to house and get some money while your at it. Its fun too and great bonding for the team:yikes:
There are sooo many ideas on how to raise money.
One of the best places for money would be different lodges in your areaâŚ
Moose lodges
Rotary clubâs places like that. Most of them are more then willing to listen to a demonstration from a team and sometimes they give money.
Also places that have lots of money would be car lots and dealers you might be able to find a nice one to help you out if you advertise for them.
Do not forget about grants from local and federal and also private places.
send me a PM for more ideas if you need them
We have one fund raiser⌠our golf tournament all ya need to know is in this packet. Team Fusion Golf Tournament
Oh Em Gee. I have to try this. Im going to suggest it at our next meeting. I would SO pay to smash a car with a sledgehammer ( Unless it was a GM Car 
)
Krispy Kreme donuts have fund raising packages they offer to groups.
Theres a local car wash franchise (Auto Bell ) the offers groups help with fund raising , the groups sell preprinted coupons for a car wash and they get a percentage of the money for themselfs.
Food Lion supermarkets also help groups with fund raising with hot dog sales in front of their stores.
Something to check into also⌠here in Greensboro,NC ⌠non-profit groups man the concessions at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex . The groups keep the profits from the food and drink sales. Perhaps the coliseum in your area has such a deal too.
Good luck at the fund raising
Remember sell the sizzle not the steak. 
We, Team 241 (out of NH), Do a classic Car show, brought in huge amounts of money. we contacted all the local car clubs and asked them to bring cars and had the public vote for their favorite cars. we charged a small fee to have your car in the show, and then charged admission and had a huge consession stand. A DJ is also something good to have at one of these, as is your robot. we got press coverage and tons of other stuff
here is our basic outline from our website on how to plan a car show
Planning a Car Show
Booking a Day
¡ Early fall is the best time to host a car show
o Be sure to start working on it before summer vacation
¡ Run the show from mid morning to early afternoon (10-2)
¡ Find a suitable parking lot that can support all your cars
o If your school has one we recommend using that
¡ Choose a day when the lot is available months in advance
o If you are using your schoolâs lot be sure there arenât any home sports events to compete with
o Choose the day months in advance for advertising purposes
¡ Be sure to have a RAIN DATE!
Getting Cars and Spectators
¡ Contact area car clubs and invite them
o Go to âcruising nightsâ and advertise the event
¡ Find local websites for car shows and clubs to advertise on
o Advertise months in advance
¡ Put up flyers in local businesses
o Especially car dealerships and auto shops
¡ Contact local papers to advertise the event
o Also invite papers to send a reporter to the show
¡ Invite car local car dealerships to bring cars
¡ Advertise months in advance
Entertainment
¡ Ask to borrow your schoolâs sound system and hook it up outside
o Be able to play music and use a microphone
¡ Play music during the event
o Make a play list of car and cruising songs
o Be sure the music is appropriate and tolerable my all age groups
¡ A DJ is not required
o If you can find one who will donate his time do it
o If not just choose one of your team members to MC
¡ Have your robot there and driving around
o Entertainment as well as a demonstration of your team
Food
¡ Keep it simple
o One choice for a meal (we recommend hot dogs)
o Have chips and drinks
¡ Try to find a grocery store who will donate some food and drinks for you or give you a discount
Prizes
¡ Give a complementary just for entering a car
o We used ribbons with the name of the event
§ Order in bulk and donât put the year on them so they can be reused
¡ Keep it simple: first, second, and third place
¡ Get prizes focused around car care: oil, detailing kits, oil changes, etc
o Try to see if local car shops will donate prizes
¡ We recommend awarding prized by popular vote
¡ Each car owner or spectator gets one voting ticket with entry
¡ Assign each car a number upon arrival to use for voting
o Keep a record of the year, make, and model of cars and their numbers
Running the Event
¡ Get there early to set up food tables and equipment
¡ Charge a fee for cars to enter and for spectators
o $10 for cars and $2-$5 for spectators recommended
o Post people at every entrance to charge entry fees
¡ Keep a record of all cars entered and a way to contact the owner for next year
¡ Have students parking cars in the lot
o Park cars in order of their number
¡ Be sure to have cans for garbage
¡ Have plenty of extension cords
¡ Set up a table where people can vote, check in, and look at information about your team
o Have your robot near by
¡ HAVE FUN!
I just stopped by my local volunteer fire dept and bought 2 dozen roses for Valentineâs Day. I live in a rural area and we depend on the fire dept.
In talking with the all the volunteers, this is the first year they have tried this fundraiser and they are very happy. The flower company provided all the signs (they are everywhere) and the fire dept. can return any roses not sold. It is pure profit for them.
Teams might want to think about this for next year!
MOE 365 last year had a 5K run in which we raised about $2000 from sponsorships and pledges. We had a local company that organizes these types of runs in order to make it an âofficialâ event that serious runners can use to record their times - Iâm not a runner so donât ask me for details on that. It cost more but we got more runners than we would without it. But you can make an unofficial event as well. Money is raised by sponsors and by pledges. We were able to get sponsors that wouldnât ordinarily be interested in sponsoring a robot team but who routinely sponsor 5Ks and marathons, like a chiropractor. Individual team members also went out and got pledges per miles ran (or walked in many instances). The amount you can raise that way is unlimited.
We also advertised to local FLL and FVC teams, several of which used it as their own fundraiser via pledges.
Our 5K this year is scheduled for April 7th. Details are on our web page - http://www.moe365.org/
P.S. I didnât run it last year - I took pictures of the runners instead!
our team made over $400 just doing cookiegrams. get the team to create an order form of their specialties, and the school can order cookies with messages to send to friends or whoever they wish within the school.
We host a FIRST Lego League, clean-up after basketball games, and put the Mascot (me) on street corners with a sign saying âNeed money for boltsâ
Our team was thinking of hosting a game night. thatâs when people pay to play games, like chess, checkers, or even video games, which is really popular in my school. I think that when thinking of ways to fundraise, people have to think of ideas that are popular amongst their community and/or school. 
A local restaurant, called the TI Inn, has created a special in honor of us. Itâs called âThe Worldâs Largest Pancake Breakfast.â Basically, people pre-order the breakfast, and they get them on any weekend in⌠I think itâs mid-May to late-June. Anyway, it seems like its going to be a huge success.
Try suggesting things like that to local businesses. See what happens. Good luck!
Well our kids came up with a fund rasing idea that I canât tell if they were serious or not. For $1 you can rub my head for good luck. The first thing I thought was " If they come in last, theyâre robot is a pile of scrap and the lead teacher quits do we give them their money back?"
For the 2007 season, Team 228 teamed up with a local neighborhood association group to sell pulled pork sandwiches at the Meriden Daffodil Festival, a HUGE parade and festival in our town that draws 200,000+ people every year. Some civic groups in the past have reported earning as much as $30,000 selling food and concessions at this event!
This past year, weâve also had a car wash, a pasta dinner, and a pancake breakfast, all of which earned between $500 and $1000. In the coming months, weâre planning on hosting another car wash and a possible can and bottle drive.
// Shameless plug: If youâll be at the Meriden Daffodil Festival in Connecticut on Saturday April 28 or Sunday April 29, 2007 and would like to support a fellow FIRST team, then be sure to stop by our food booth in the concessions tent!