Hi Everyone! I’m from FTC Team 4102. I’ve been tasked with looking into other teams operations and using their success to obtain new resources for my team. We’re looking for how teams are funding, average budgets and any info on how your advisors are compensated, if they are. We would love any information you can share.
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We have two coaches who split a single coaches stipend. The team operates year round. The stipend is for 3 months. Fundraising, we apply for grants (OSPI state educational grant, Boeing, SPEEA, and others) We receive aluminum at a significant discount from a local supplier. We reach out to companies where mentors and parents work for sponsorship. We try other companies but start with ones where there is already a connection. Each student writes 5 letters to friends and family. Our annual budget is about $30K
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We run our fundraising operations similarly to Jim - we reach out to companies with an established connection through a parent, friend, other sponsor, etc. and then move on to cold calling other local manufacturing businesses. Additionally, we have “support tiers” for our sponsors - e.x. if they give us $2500 they get their company name/logo on the bot, if they give us $1000 their name is on the team shirt, etc. If you have the resources and mostly local sponsors, inviting them to a sponsor night and demonstrating the robot really helps with keeping sponsors for multiple years. We’re an FRC team but our annual budget is also close to $30-35k.
I highly recommend taking a look at the FIRST Fundraising Toolkit. It has lots of examples about team business planning, making contacts with sponsors, etc. The examples are mostly from FRC teams, but I think a lot of it still applies to FTC teams.
Thank you everyone for the information! I really appreciate it!
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Is this budget just for an FTC team? I saw that you are related to more than one FIRST team.
FRC. My FTC was a middle school team and was retired during covid. FTC budget was about 4K per year. With all the tools being my personal purchases.
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