I am once again reaching out to more seasoned teams. Realizing the greatness that is having a build budget >$1,000, I am hoping to secure more funding for the team in the coming years. However, in the past two years, I have missed significant deadlines. As I am still attending college for my degree in teaching, I continuously miss those early fall/late summer grant deadlines for robotics programs. My question is this: Is there a comprehensive guide or strategy to getting funding? And in your experiences, do you get more money from small business sponsorships or large grants from companies like Google and NASA? Small businesses have been our go-to this year and have netted us a significant amount of money, but I feel I am missing a world of grant money that we could be using (Only one received this year was a grant from the Department of Education, which got us a CNC Router!)
I don’t know of any comprehensive guide. But I can tell you to keep an eye out for the Intuitive Foundation grant app - I typically post the link on CD in August or September, with the application due at the end of October. Our grants are typically in the $1k-2k range, and we welcome applications from any non-rookie FRC team (you don’t have to be located near an Intuitive hub or be affiliated with an employee).
For the rest of your questions - we get most of our funding from private donors and large tech companies. We have a list of grants we apply for every year, and since we’re located in Silicon Valley we often have students whose parents work at tech companies and get us additional grants that way.
We hit up our local manufacturers. They have recognized the value in supporting our students and want the type of kids that participate on our team as a part of their company. We come from a small, rural town of less than 5000 residents in Northern Michigan. The companies in our area take pride in contributing to our community. The thing that worked best is to set up a time to talk to the managers/owners and have the kids do the presenting. It is hard for them to say no to the kids! Grants are only our secondary source of funding.