Hello everyone,
So, this year our team is hoping to qualify for VEX Worlds. However, if we qualify, the cost may be too much for our members to cover. We have decided as a team to try to raise as much money as possible. But we need some ideas for what we can actually do to raise money. We are looking to start as early as possible. Each member of the team can raise funds individually, or as a group with other team members. Does anybody have any advice?
Our team did a crunch fundraiser where they painted address numbers on curbs. The material cost and skill required is low, and you can charge $20+ per sign. You can do 4-5 in an hour easily. They advertised on neighborhood list-serves and in local school newsletters to get initial houses to work at, went door to door to houses surrounding the one they were working on, and had a sign indicating who they were and what the fundraiser was for visible to people walking/driving by.
It seems from you are from the UK from you signature so you have a more expensive trip than most US folks. How many people would be coming?
Are there corporate donations available? What companies over in the UK are pushing STEM education? Dyson has a big robot center in the UK, but not sure if they are close to you.
There are 8 in our team, but two have already said that they won’t be able to go anyway. That knocks it down to six. Probably 4 at the least. Right now I think we are predicting that it will cost around £1200-£1500 per person. But these are early season estimates.
As for corporate donations and companies pushing STEM education, I’m not aware of any. I know there will probably be some out there, but I can’t think of any right now.
As for how much we actually wish to raise; as we said, as much as possible. But we understand that we may not be able to cover the cost of the trip by this fundraising alone
It may be different of the UK, but what we have done is become part of a tax exempt organization. Then one of the parents got us setup for $10 PDQ restaurant cards that they sell to tax exempt organizations for $3 at a minimum of $1500 worth, so 500 cards. Then we re-sell them for 4/$25. This doubles the money to $3125.
Also, some parents’ jobs will match donations to a tax exempt organization, so we can take money from that and run it through, which doubles it again depending upon how much they will match.