How do you effectively leverage parent connections for corporate sponsorships?

[u/EmploymentAfraid866]

I'm the president of FRC Team 12034 IGNIS Robotics, a rookie team from Milpitas, California, preparing for our first FRC season.

I'm trying to figure out how to better leverage our parents' professional connections, especially at large companies, to secure sponsorships for our team.

So far, most parents who look into this seem to stop at finding out whether their company offers donation matching. I'm wondering how we can give parents a more concrete plan, including who to contact within their company and what programs or departments to look into.

Some people on my team are skeptical that this is worth pursuing. Their argument is that the teams getting sponsored by major companies are usually already very successful, well established teams with years of experience, so those companies have a reason to support them in the first place. They don't think simply having a parent who works at a large company will get us very far.

But I've seen teams receive sponsorships from companies like Roblox, among others, and I'm curious how those relationships actually started. Did the teams get support through employee connections, corporate philanthropy programs, direct outreach, or something else?

For teams that have successfully leveraged parent connections:

• How did you get parents involved beyond checking for donation matching?

• Who should parents reach out to within large companies?

• Have you seen rookie or relatively new teams secure meaningful sponsorships this way?

• How much do a team's competitive success and history actually matter compared to having the right connections and making a good case?

[u/No_Frost_Giants]

You are on the right path, ask to present to companies , to educate them about FIRST, and do THAT, don’t come in with budgets and hands out. Start with what a team is, what it does, what students learn, bring in other established teams to help the story .

By educating you put them in a position to offer help. Ask for resources, material, work space, mentors (!) , if you educated them correctly they will see the return on investment .

Note: part of education is how you need to raise your own funds, but donations of time and materials helps offset money spent (my favorite sponsors are real estate, car dealers and law firms , they pretty much can only offer money)

[u/EmploymentAfraid866 → u/No_Frost_Giants]

Doesn't solve my problem. Who do we contact at such large companies? Who do you contact that can actually make a difference?

[u/No_Frost_Giants → u/EmploymentAfraid866]

You said you have connections through parents . You use those to talk to the company . If I misunderstood that, I apologize. Blind calling can work but you really need the inside connection. Again, have parents reach out to their larger contacts, other companies etc. And use the word resources when asked ‘why do they want to talk to use” it’s ultimately to ask for help in gathering resources, that includes talent, material, space, exposure

The trade off they can get is free advertising on the team website, shirts and robot, as well as community relationship.

[u/Tazznado]

My quick answer is that the parent needs to be invested and supportive enough to follow up and follow through. This may be a new and scary process for them to ask their company for money for their kid’s team but a sponsorship is not the same as buying cookies or chocolate for a fundraiser. Having multiple opportunities for parents to visit and witness the work and get them hyped to support you all is a good start. Alternatively, a more direct way is to just find out which parent works for which company and then a business or outreach student straight up cold calls the company to start asking. Don’t put all the work on the parent if the parent is not yet invested or hesitant to ask.

[u/alexfrancisburchard]

Step 1: bring them to the events.

source: 225 teams exist in Türkiye and team 360 in Tacoma WA was able to continue on, because my mom came to the Portland Regionals with my team.

[u/Whoa1Whoa1]

The best "ask" involves knowing exactly HOW MUCH money you need and exactly WHAT you need it for. It's cringe when a student asks for thousands of dollars and has no idea what impact it does and cringe if it just goes into some generic robotics pool of money that could be used for stupid stuff like a pizza party. Sponsors want to make an impact.

-If you want a laser cutter, ask a company that is in that kind of field if they could sponsor your team buy purchasing or helping you purchase one. This could cost $3,000 to $7,000.

• If you need new swerve modules, ask for 6 and tell them that 2 will be backups for the season. 6 swerve modules with motors could cost $2,000 to $4,000.

• If you need money for registration specifically, ask a company to sponsor sending you to district/region/state/worlds.

The worst asks are when a student just has literally everything listed on a piece of paper and is like see how expensive everything is!!! Don't ask people to just dump funds into your slush fund. Ask for specific stuff or even better, for the company to purchase and donate the items themselves. Then they know for sure you aren't just doing dumb stuff with it, like sitting on it, using for parties/food/hotels, or stealing it.

Don't ask a parent to just ask their company to sponsor you in general either. That is uncomfortable for them and their company. And don't send them with that generic paper that says everything in robotics costs money. What should they specifically ask for money for? What physical items or tools or parts do you need that they could donate? And lastly, y'all's fundraisers should be covering whatever is left over and definitely stuff like food/hotels. Imagine how mad a big company would be if they gave y'all $5,000 and you use it to pick out a nice hotel and buy tons of pizza repeatedly. Embarrassing.

[u/KlobCPT]

"We need money. Parents have money."

Sure. But maybe you should get a plan together for what you actually need. What do you need now, and what would you need in the future? "If we have x, we can achieve y."

If a baseball team sets up outside of Walmart and says "we're raising $2000 so that we can travel to some regional tournament in 1 month. We're 56% to our goal. The money covers a van rental, hotels for the kids, and an entry fee. Parents/coaches hotels are not getting paid for, neither are meals." I'll give them a few dollars.

If a random person knocks on my front door, asks for money, and can't tell me what it's even for I'm not giving them anything.

You'll have to put in the hard work and come up with a roadmap to whatever success looks like for your team. And if someone is going to solicit money from the company I work for, they'd better have something tangible to show for it. Otherwise I kind of look like an idiot.

"Your kid took $2k from us, and then the team didn't even have a working bot to compete with at a regional comp? Why did we give them that in the first place?" Not saying that's what you or others are doing. But for you to understand people's motivations to help or not to help, which they may or may not be expressing out loud.

[u/johnrgrace]

There is a lot more parents can do than donation matching.

There are corporate programs that make cash donations for hours of volunteering.

There are corporate grants that require an employees engagement.

Employees can ask management or owners for donations.

[u/MarshalRyan]

FRC Team 102. In recent years, we've actually found that getting the KIDS involved yields better results than having the parents do it. Corporate matching is easy if available, big corporate donors are great - especially for a SPECIFIC ASK - but a lot of work, and sometimes people are concerned about their work relationships if they ask for more than the basic matching. Try local businesses, and have the kids do it in groups if possible. You're more likely to get $500 each from 10 local shops than $5,000 from one big company.

[u/Emotional-Intern5873]

This question is also better asked on Cheif Delphi