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FIRST Robotics Competition: What are ways that high school students can fundraise for their after-school programs?

• Besides asking for donations or sponsorships, how else can a high school student raise funds for their school program such as FIRST Robotics?

• Answer:

  I didn't help out much in fundraising for my robotics team as much as developing the website, however I did talk to the people who did the financing. I can't guarantee that my answer will be 100% correct. In order for any company / person to sponsor the team, you gotta get the team to look good. As in, show them your robot (which hopefully looks like it can kick ass), find past footage where your team scored, compile it into a video, put it on a flash drive and drive up to the company with the robot and footage. It's all about the presentation. If you can't show that your team is outstanding and can at least somewhat compete well (or show some potential), then you won't get as much money as you'd like to. A couple other ways we raised money was the traditional high school bake sale and show-and-tell stuff. We also had some musicians on the team who did gigs and put in money into the team account. A couple potential ways you could also raise money is to implement a donation button (probably with PayPal or Dwolla), maybe some Bitcoin investment (if you think it could go up), or just asking for connections from friends and family to see if they can donate / sponsor the team. FIRST is a very expensive program, but totally worth it for the experience, thrill, and fun in the end. Quick ninja edit: I read somewhere else about attempting to start a crowdsourcing thing on Indiegogo or Kickstarter, and all I can say is that don't even bother with it. There are thousands of FRC teams out there that also need money, and there is nearly no way that you will earn anything out of the campaigns that you put up.