Hey guys,
I’m an alumni from team 975 (based out of Midlothian, VA)
We (the students) have just received news that we do not have the resources to continue participating in FRC for the 2011 season, or the 2010 season for FTC. I am sending out an SOS to our FIRST community to help us at least compete in the 2010 FTC season.
I probably don’t have to explain how essential the “FIRST experience” is throughout a team. For ours the biggest thing is it creates a place where we can all just be ourselves (while accomplishing things our classmates assume impossible).
So I’m asking my fellow FIRST mates to lend a hand. We need ideas on how to continue. What kept your team going during this recession? What’s the best way to get sponsors on such a low (or no) budget? How can we beat down the “robotics is for nerds” stereotype, and win over the student population of our school? How can ~10 students make a voice in a crowd? PLEASE HELP!
Below are two threads with hundreds of ideas on fund raising and sponsership. It will need to be a team effort with frequent meetings with fundraising the #1 topic to get all kids and parents involved. Most teams face this issue and it is an important part of team developement. I doubt that any one thing will get the money you need, it will take many efforts, a little at a time. Good luck. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68051 http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68044
If you have a small group of students that wants to do FRC, but just can’t get the money or sponsorship, another option would be to look for another local team that accepts students from other schools.
By “resources” do you mean money (sponsor or school), school support or permission, build facilities, or mentors? All of these require different solutions.
Like someone said, just get some small donations. Create some posters and maybe a video to show to people. Run fundraisers. A lot of our funding comes from sponsors from the community (we are a small team in a rural school corp only 7-8 members on the team and only 250ish kids in the school lol.) The money is there you just have to contact the community. If you can’t reach that goal, look for another team and merge. But first, go ahead and contact your state contacts like posted in here and get tips.
Try going to your local and every surrounding area Chamber of Commerce and ask if you could do a demo for their next meeting. Let them know the dire situation that you are in. You would be surprised at the amount of people who would write a check then and there. Also go to your local Kawanii’s club and speak to them. Do a demo and put together a Power Point while they eat lunch. They will take a month to decide but will usually write a check for $500.00, at least in our area that seems to be the amount. Do you have a college near you? Go to them and ask for help. Wash cars, sell candy etc… We are a very small team as well and we are so grateful for all of our sponsors. We also though raise money through fundraisers. Is there another local team near you? Maybe do a Battle of the Bands between 2 schools. Good Luck!!
Get the robot out as much as the administration will let you. Just for nerds? Nope. Find a basketball or soccer player who seems interested, then have him/her try a human player task (or play soccer with the robot). The “non-nerd” has fun with the robot, and everybody sees that robotics is not just for nerds.
Funding. See above posts, but here’s some more advice.
You don’t have to ask for much. Coupons to a local eatery that you can sell/raffle are just as good as money, for example.
See if grandparents will help you out. Ask 234 for ideas on how to approach them.
Don’t limit requests to money. Fundraising night at a local restaurant, coupons, items for another fundraiser, food during build, and other similar things can really help.
*]Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, VFW, AMVETS, and other community-based organizations could help you with ideas, fundraisers, or maybe even funding. Never hurts to ask them.
One of the best ways to gain support from school administrators is to inform them of the education opportunities that FIRST offers. Use examples like the 12 million dollars of scholarship available to FIRST students, the hands on experience that you can’t emulate in the classroom, the ability to work with professional engineers and establish relationships, and the successes of alumni from the team that were a result of FIRST. Another thing that usually gets their attention is showing them what it means to the students. For example, up until 3 and a half years ago, I played hockey, and I pretty much lived for the game. I had played from when I was 2 years old until I was 14, when I suffered a life threatening injury that prevents me from ever playing again. However, FIRST has given me the opportunity to be a part of a team again. Whenever I tell this story to any adult they empathize and really see what it means to me and my teammates. If they truely understand, they might see to it that at least and FTC team happens. Best of luck to you guys, and I hope everyhing works out.
My team can actually relate to this quite a bit, we have been lucky though.
We ended up paying our registration at the last minute (literally, I think it was payed the on the deadline) and only thanks to one of sponsors generously wiring us the money. We have since fixed this for the most part.
I do not know if this can help but my team discussed this at one of our planning meetings dedicated to fundraising for this year. How to Approach Sponsors: (I hope this is useful advice)
Start with companies that are more likely to sponsor you. Generally start with the companies that you have a connection to (students’ relatives, school connections, …) these should be the easiest to get because you already have a foot in the door; then try the high-tech, manufacturing, and engineering companies, I don’t think I really need to explain why these should be a primary target; the third type of company would the non-technical company these can be more difficult because they may not be able offer anything other than money.
Whenever you approach a company, always contact the highest ranked person you can, preferably a president or general manager type person. You generally do not want to make the cold call to someone other than a executive because it easier for them to shut you down by saying that they cannot authorize it or something along those lines.
One thing that I have learned is that a company is much more likely to sponsor a team if they have more members. Why would a company give a team tons of money or resources if it is only going to help 10 kids. Companies are much more willing to give money if it is helping 20 or 30 or more students.
Companies also want to know that your organization is legitimate. There is no better way to do this than to show them that other companies have supported the team; doing this helps a company see that another company is helping them so they must be real. The best way to do this is to get referred to the potential sponsor by another company (hopefully one who has already sponsored you) thus showing them that you aren’t just some guy trying to scam them or something.
Another way to help show you are real and worth sponsoring is by looking professional. What this means is have your team look like a company (if not functioning like one); you should have a business plan, flyers/brochures, a short powerpoint or video about your team, a team uniform (team shirt, all team members wearing the same color, or something), badges with your team name and your name on them, and so on. Basically look like a team not a bunch of teenagers.
It also helps to have a defined, realistic monetary goal. My team right now is trying to raise $34,540 this year (a drastic change from $11,000 and $9,500 in the past) in order to get new tools and machine equipment and of course pay for competing. The number we chose was created by analyzing our expenses last year and the costs of purchasing tools and so on; basically we spent some time and mapped out our budget. One of our mentors (who is in sales and marketing at his company) explained to us why more exact and realistic numbers are important; he said that whenever you do something, the expenses will never end up giving you a nice even number like $34,000 on the dot. By using more realistic numbers it makes it seem as if (even if you did not) you planned out your budget.
another thing along those same lines is when asking for money don’t say that you haven’t raised any if you haven’t, say that you are halfway or a third of the way there (using realistic numbers) already, and by doing this it makes the potential sponsor feel “safer” sponsoring because others already are. This may seem somewhat dishonest but this is what one of our mentors told us from there own experience in marketing and sales.
Now this is probably the hardest part (at least for me): the cold call. Making a cold call or email or letter, to a company you have not had any contact with is difficult and requires practice. I do not know of any real advice I could give you on how to go about doing the actual call but here is what we try to do. first, we always try to aim for as high an executive as possible, generally the president or vice-president of something (not accounting, they can shut you down the easiest), these are the ones who are calling the shots at the company and have the final say so they are more likely to be able sponsor you. second, you should try to call, email, or mail the potential sponsor to make the initial contact do not try walking in because they generally do not like that and are thus less likely to help. third, whatever you say you will do, do it,this may seem like common sense, but if you say you will call them in a week, you better call them in a week. a fourth thing you should (need) do is to have a spiel rehearsed about what your organization is … and be prepared for any questions, and if you do not know answer say that do not lie and get stuck. there are probably more things about cold calls but this is all I got.
Always make sure that only one person (salesman) is contacting a company because it can be really, really bad if you already hit up a company and one of your team members tells that company something that conflicts with what you told them; and now all your credibility is gone, or at least you look like you need to coordinate better. The point is coordinate who hits up which company and make sure that everyone reports back about what they have done/accomplished.
If you guys are really committed to keeping your team going you need to cultivate those sponsors you can secure. Make sure that you always thank them, give them team t-shirts, plaques, and other things to show them that you appreciate them. It is important also to keep your sponsors informed about what is going on with your team; invite them to build sessions, team parties, planning meeting, competitions, add them to a mail list, do something; it is not a good idea to get money in november and not contact them again until next november and ask for money again.
Try to contact all (if any) of the high-tech companies in your area. See if you can get anything whether it be money, services, materials, a workplace, or whatever. If they offer you something “take it and go”. You never ask for more unless you really have a good relationship with the sponsor.
I know this will only help if you have companies in your area but do not limit yourself to just your area go wherever you can find companies that may sponsor. The only reason I am emphasizing sponsorships over fundraising is that if you can build a relationship with the sponsors the team is more likely to survive otherwise the team really will not have a strong and dependable source of “income” and may end up going through this again
I really cannot off the top of my head think of anything else about approaching sponsors.
The only other things I can add are:
-contact the regional coordinator people in your area or other people who generally know which companies are looking to sponsor and direct you to them or them to you.
-Try fundraising (I do not know how well this will work with a small team)
-Apply for grants
-If worst comes to worse you could charge a team fee to help pay for registration.
Garret, how many sponsors does your team ask, and do you have any recommendations on which ones would most likely work? Here in the Netherlands, we need an insane amount of fundraising simply to get us to America. We can barely manage to get 6 of us there, and we’d like to be able to take everyone. $34,540 is simply too much for us here. So far, every year we’ve participated we’ve somehow scrounged up the money. With the majority of us being seniors, the bare min. of around 13k (sorry we haven’t calculated everything yet) for flights/hotels/kit of parts combined, we rarely have enough to go on the economy here and buy the parts we need. Our school is secluded from the locals, so small businesses would be reluctant to fund some foreign team. Team 975, you have it lucky you are in the US and at least have a community that can help more directly.
how many sponsors does your team ask, and do you have any recommendations on which ones would most likely work?
My team is asking about 20 sponsors in our first “wave” of fundraising efforts this year. These companies include a lot of medical device companies, rapid prototyping companies, defense contractors, and engineering/robotics companies, manufacturing companies, machine shops, and industrial suppliers; these are the types of companies I would recommend. I have no idea what companies are in the Netherlands but I would suggest you go for all companies that are high-tech and have a large investment in employing skilled engineers. I do not know how I would attempt to “market” (my word for approaching sponsors) in the Netherlands. All I can recommend is trying to “sell” FIRST to them; what I mean by sell is to explain the mission of FIRST and how that mission would help their company and the future generations and so on. Normally here I would emphasize lots of statistics about how far behind the US has fallen in math and science education but in the Netherlands I do not think that would be as great a selling point, as you are way ahead of us in those aspects.
My other suggestion about approaching companies is to go and research whatever companies you are going to approach so that you can change your sales pitch to match the potential sponsor. I really do not feel that I can help much other than what I suggested in my previous post.
$34,540 is simply too much for us here. So far, every year we’ve participated we’ve somehow scrounged up the money. With the majority of us being seniors, the bare min. of around 13k (sorry we haven’t calculated everything yet) for flights/hotels/kit of parts combined, we rarely have enough to go on the economy here and buy the parts we need.
$34,540 is a huge amount of money. I only used this number because this is my teams fundraising goal and to make the point to make the numbers more “jagged” as to make it seem more realistic. I understand the issue of having problems fundraising because my team used to have a similar issue because of our lethargic at best attempts to get sponsors. The point of my using the massive number was emphasizing the jagged end not the number itself.
Our school is secluded from the locals, so small businesses would be reluctant to fund some foreign team.
I do not know what you mean by them being reluctant to fund a foreign team (I am assuming you are refering to your team). In my experience it is important to ask all companies you can. The main issue is whether or not a particular company is worth the effort of trying to obtain sponsorship from it, I mean should your team put a considerable amount of effort into a company with little chance of it paying off. without knowing your situation all I can recommend is going after companies who you think are likely to sponsor first, after you have exhausted all of those options you should go after the other small businesses.
Also if the small businesses are reluctant to sponsor a team because it is not from their area, you should sell your team not as from a particular school but as a team representing a larger area, I do not know how many teams are in the Netherlands but try selling the team as representing the Netherlands.
I hope this helps and makes sense,
Garret
One local sponsorship problem: The Richmond area is not very large and there are 17 FRC teams nearby. That’s not to say sponsors aren’t out there, but the larger ones are likely already sponsoring a team or two.
Team 2037’s high school is for the dependents of American military personnel; it is a school for Americans, which happens to be located in The Netherlands.
Thus, a Netherlands company (particularly a local one) might see this entity as a “foreign” school/team.
Team 2037’s high school is for the dependents of American military personnel; it is a school for Americans, which happens to be located in The Netherlands.
Thus, a Netherlands company (particularly a local one) might see this entity as a “foreign” school/team.
I was unaware of that. That just makes it a lot harder than it would have been already.
