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Funding a FIRST Team Part 1: Groundwork and Fundraisers

3/24/2018

(tune in next week for Part 2: Sponsorship)

Competing on robotics teams is impossible without funding. Robotics is an expensive sport, and fundraising allows teams to do what they do! This being said, the process of fundraising can be difficult to start and to continue. So here are some tips on how to start and what to look for when setting up and running fundraisers.

How to Start

Utilize your off season: The best time to fundraise in when your team is not mid competition season. Working in the off season gives time to fundraise well, and helps your team hit the ground running in your upcoming season.
Budgeting: Writing a budget is the best possible place to start in the offseason. Budgeting allows teams to anticipate costs and create a fundraising goal. Plan for no surprises! Good budgets should include the costs of everything your team spends money on in a season. Include robot hardware, parts, electronics, motors, servos, anything that needs to be replaced, tools, materials, FIRST’s registration fee, tourament registration fees, team branding materials, cost of running events, travel costs if your team competes out of state, and probably a lot of duct tape.
Business Plan: Writing a business plan not only checks off one requirement for your season, but it also helps teams outline their goals for said season. Your budget should fit your goals---teams that want to do more have to spend more. Along with goals, business plans are a home for your preliminary budget as well as actual team income and expenditures. Example business plans are available on the FIRST website.

Once you’ve set the groundwork for raising money, your team is ready to go! But how do you find sponsors and fundraising opportunities?

Finding Fundraisers

Fundraisers are an easy way to raise quick money for teams. However, fundraisers are usually one-time opportunities, and do not carry the potential for long-time relationships like sponsorships do.
- An easy way to set up fundraisers is to look at what local school sports teams are doing, and hop on opportunities wherever possible. In my team’s school district, restaurants like Chipotle, Chick fil-A, Culvers, and Leeann Chin offer fundraisers for sports teams wherein a percentage of sales within a certain timeframe go back to the team. These have been quick commitments that yield a few hundred dollars apiece. Not bad!
- Teams I’ve been on have also made good use of crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These sites will take a small percentage of money raised, but they can be incredibly beneficial and low-commitment. The value of GoFundMe lies in how easy it makes small donations. Often, families of team members want to contribute to their loved-one’s teams, and GoFundMe makes that simple.

Setting up Fundraisers

Once you know where there are opportunities for fundraisers, the next step is to get in the door!
- A great first step is to make phone calls. This will take some prep work as well. Your team should write a brief script before making any actual calls. Call scripts should include who your team is, where you are from, what you are looking for, and ways of contacting you back. Prepare for this to take no more than 30 seconds, or you risk losing the attention of the person on the other end of the phone call. When calling, have an idea of when your team would be able to be present at a fundraiser too.
- Emails work when trying to set up fundraisers, but they make less impact than calling or showing up to a business physically. Same as with phone calls, emails should be concise and get the point across early.
- Any way your team decides to get in touch with fundraising opportunities, remember to talk to the person in a company that actually makes decisions and can schedule your team. Talking to a part-time Chick fil-A cashier about your team is a great start, but then you depend on that individual to relay your information to a higher-up. When at all possible, talk to and email managers and supervisors.
All of this aside, the most important tip when looking to fund your team is persistence. There will be a lot of companies and individuals who turn you down, and that’s ok! Keep finding new opportunities, leaving voicemails when no one answers your calls, and keep trying!

(tune in next week for part 2: Sponsorship)

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

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Leonardo da vinci adventure

3/18/2018

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The Da Vinci Code (By Dan Brown) is one of my favorite books, and being able to learn more about Leonardo, and see his works inches away from my face was AWESOME! In 1452, during the Renaissance, a genius was born with the name Leonardo Da Vinci. When he was young, his uncles arranged for him to apprenticeship in the trade of architecture, sculpture, and art. He fascinated with the things around him, and felt the desire to understand the way this world works. It was his habit to always carry around folded pieces of scrap paper, where he could record things he observed, or theories that he formed. Those fragile pieces of 500 year old paper in Leonardo’s own hand, were what we saw, right in front of us! Fun fact: whenever he tried to show motion, he would also repeat and thicken the lines. His notes were tiny and neat, with little drawings on the side. Leonardo not only left incredible paintings for artists, but a legacy for scientist and engineers.

Absolutely amazing in the fact that he could do it all- observe well, write descriptively, draw lifely, and think ingenuisly. He wanted to study the mountains that were around him, and theorized that they formed because of an cave scalpel somewhere, like a see-saw: if something comes up, something else has to come down. Looking at the moon, he saw bumps, and waves, which he was only seen with by the ocean, and believed that the moon had a lot of water on it. Sure, we know today that it wasn’t correct, but just that scientific thinking and hypothesizing is something that we can learn from! Not to mention, he discovered what we today call “earth shine”, which is being able to see not only the shining crescent, but also the dark disk of the moon. Already, he made analogies with water and air currents to how the world is a system, and his genius mind had connected that sound with waves- today’s sound waves! Through observing, Leonardo discovered that water droplets, upon landing on the ground makes a crown shape. Five hundred years back, was he already spot on with something that we need super advance photography technology to spot- that’s mind blowing! He was not only a scientist, artist, but moreover an engineer, who tried to develop a solution for the flooding river. Leonardo’s solution is something that we use today-a dam. He was so great, that the famous painter Raphael, like many people today, deeply admired him, and even painted Leonardo as Pluto on one of his morals!

Killer eyesight, observation, and drawing skills, helped him see the world in a different way than majority of the people. He believed that you needed to understand what you observed. We shouldn’t be afraid to be curious and hypothesis. As the wise Leonardo said, “it’s not enough to believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.” One of the biggest things I took away from this experience was what Leonard Da Vinci showed us-to take life slowly, and notice the things around us. Sometimes we’re so focused on sprinting to our destination, that we miss the beautiful scenery along the way. Sometimes we’re too busy looking into the future that we forget the enjoy the present. With the technology today, everything is moving and advancing so quickly, and sometimes we just need to slow down to be able to fully appreciate the beautiful world around us.

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Taking Care of Yourself

3/10/2018

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   With all of your classes, and jobs, and responsibilities, and now Super Regional Tournaments, it’s important to remember not to forget about yourself in the hustle and bustle. It’s hard, when you have a lot of obligations, to take care of yourself. But your own well-being should be your first obligation.
   I realized this slowly over the last few months after I had been going to bed at 3am everyday for over two weeks. I couldn’t stay awake through any of my classes, my graders were suffering, and so were my relationships. I was getting everything done that I needed to, but none of it was done well and I wasn’t proud of any of it. I realized that for me to feel normal and healthy again, I needed to recognize my own needs: sleep, eating well, and taking time to do the things I wanted to and enjoyed doing.
   This doesn’t mean I quit everything, nor does it mean I stopped fulfilling my obligations to my teachers, my teammates, and my friends. Instead, I asked for help. I gave myself room to breathe and tried to give myself a break when I was overwhelmed. My team understood when I told them I couldn’t do all of the work I had committed to, and they helped me take tasks off of my to-do list.
I had to take care of myself in order to be proud of anything I was doing, and to make everything I was doing to feel meaningful. Doing this has made me alert and proactive again, and has allowed me to really enjoy my time in FIRST Robotics.

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

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3D printing adventure

3/3/2018

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3D printing was one of those things that I always wondered about, but never actually did any research. Well, thanks to this trip to 3D printing company, Stratasys, I uncovered a whole new world! I learned a lot of technical things from the tour guides, but just saying that I learned a couple things would be an understatement. This totally blew my mind, and I was geeking out. It’s not only a tool, but something that is a start of a new generation, new era of thinking and innovation.

We started our tour with Polyjet 3D printing. Polyjet is liquid-based, which takes the ratios of the liquid plastic, and “jets” them out to build the final product. There’s also another type of 3D printing called FDM (Fuse Deposition Modeling). It was interesting to see a injection molding, where they inject the liquid plastic between two molds for finer, detailed designs. I especially found their “rotary into retillier motion” 3D piece fascinating- it would spin a wheel, and get a linear motion (instead of the usual circular motion!).

In the lobby, we were all drawn to a giant 3D printed creature that looked like it walked out of Harry Potter. There, we were introduced to casting material, like paint, to give the printed parts a more desired look. We also dug deeper into how they work with customers, plus R&D (research and development) and Testing. Basically, it’s designing the product, 3D printing it, and continue tweaking/developing it, till it’s to the point where they bring in consumers to test it on. That sounded really cool, and Evan (our guide) described the best part of his job to be helping and working with people.

It absolutely took our breath away to see the world’s largest multi-material 3D printer in action! It was huge, and usually prints for 130+ hours! Here, we learned that a big factor in how long it takes to create a new part, depends on how tall/thick it is. We also got to peek in the backroom, where they presented an innovative idea. The problem with FDM printers are that they create air gaps in the parts, and so someone came up with the genius idea of using a vacuum mold, and pouring the plastic to fill in the gaps.

3D parts are becoming an amazing help in the world, and branching into practically every industry. Fun fact: ESD printed parts, if put between two antennas, can break the interference of radio signals. Another fun fact we stumbled across, upon almost dropping $800 worth of vero-blue (a type of plastic): vero-clear comes out yellowish, but if you leave it under the sun for a while, it will transform into see-through clear. And, who could forget support material? The “magic” that makes printed parts move. With support material, it gives the part a matte feel, or else it becomes glossy. In the end, we all received 3D printed catapults that are made from a certain plastic, that can resist gamma radiation!

Overall, I had a blast learning about 3D printing! There’s so much we could do with it! As long as you have a design, you can create it with a 3D printer! It has made developing prototypes much more efficient, and is less costly. They have already started with 3D printed arms and legs in the biomedical fields. It was incredibly interesting, inspiring, and innovative! With what they have already accomplished, and the endless possibilities of what could happen. As someone wise said today, “if you can think it, you can make it!”

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Funding a FIRST Team Part 1: Groundwork and Fundraisers

Leonardo da vinci adventure

Taking Care of Yourself

3D printing adventure

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