2009-2010 Fundraising Ideas

[ericjang]

Hey everyone,

with the year rapidly approaching, CHS robotics is in need of money. To do this, our primary source of income will be from corporate sponsors, but fundraisers such as the car wash have contributed a sizeable amount as well to our budget requirement: $25,000. We currently have about $1440 from car wash fundraisers. That said, we need to organize more fundraisers to raise money. In comparison to the Lynbrook Robotics team, they make about $3000-$4000 selling concessions at popular sightseeing events (blue angels, etc.)

We will probably host a few more car washes this year, but does anybody have any fundraising ideas? (If you already sent me an email, just copy paste here so everyone can see). I wanted to host a meeting with all you guys, but seeing as you all are very busy this year, entering information on this thread may be more accommodating to your schedules.

Please, make the ideas reasonable- If operation costs are present (cost of buying concessions, etc.) are present, net profit must be appropriate- I'm thinking at least $400 per 8 hours (the car wash makes an average of $650 with 96 man-hours). Please do not post ideas that have no real relevance to fundraising.

Hopefully, individual ideas can be answered by team members- if there are too many side conversations per idea, we may have to make new threads. This thread's primary purpose is to get some ideas out.


Thanks,
Eric Jang

[jennifershieh]

Maybe sell a bulk of candy bars... My brother did that two years in the past and sold each bar for $1, and he did get some profit. It's not much, but it's still money. All of them sold out, but he bought a few of them from himself to raise money. :/

[evelynchin]

Hello there,

You guys know (or may not know) that the Speech and Debate team hosts an annual SSBM tournament where people can play against each other or just try out the game to raise money, charging $5 each person (I think). We could try hosting a Guitar Hero tournament to get more money. I'm not exactly sure how much money the debate team got from their tournaments so it would be helpful if someone could find out so that we can determine if this idea is worth all the hassle. And yes, if we are going to pull this off, it is going to take A LOT of planning and preparation.

Hosting an SSBM tournament is not very easy. Hosting a Guitar Hero tournament is going to be harder. Guitar Hero has many different series and branches, but i think Guitar Hero 4(World Tour) would be the best option because it has guitars, drums, and vocals.

Game consoles could possibly be a benefit or an issue. Guitar Hero 4 is available on the Wii, PS3, PS2, and Xbox360. This means that probably a lot of people own this game and can lend us their console/game/controllers to use. But probably most people only know how to work only one of these 3 consoles and may shift around to different consoles. And if a console has technical difficulties then it might get a little weird if nobody standing there knows how to handle that console. But this is probably one of the minor issues to this fundraiser.

Another problem is the controllers. Guitar Hero controllers are not your average controllers. Life-like guitars, drums, and microphones can take up a lot of space in a room. Plus these controllers are probably easier to break than classic controllers. So if someone is strumming the guitar way too hard or someone is pounding on the drums or someone is trying to eat the microphone we'll need people to tell them to take it easy. These things are very easily broken. I know. Because I have experience.

But probably the biggest issue of getting this to work is getting all the space we need, all the consoles/controllers AND the TVs, projectors, and computer monitors.(please excuse my terrible grammar). No room no place to host this. No consoles/controllers no game to play. No TVs, projectors, or monitors nothing to connect the consoles to.

As you can see, this could be very chaotic. And that's why we need to have an approximation of how much money this will give us so we can decide whether we'll carry this out or not. Of course, Guitar Hero is one of the hardest games to set up with the different controllers. We can also try different video games like Halo or CoD. But I have a feeling Guitar Hero is known more and is easier to play for people who just want to try out the game. If you want to add onto this please do. We need to figure out everything about this as possible to make it work.

[ericjang]

Hi Jennifer, Evelyn,

Thanks for these ideas!
Those are both great ideas, and it may be possible that we do that in the future.

Jennifer, I'm not sure if the school allows us to sell candy bars at school for health reasons, but that's definitely an easy fundraiser to manage if the school lets us sell them on campus- we just need signups for volunteers that monitor the stockpile during brunch/lunch/after school. Also, we need to figure out real monetary statistics before we can go ahead with executing the fundraiser. Can you ask your brother how many bars were sold and how much money they made approximately, and what organization he raised money for?

Evelyn, provided that all equipment, space, and time are donated by team members, the profit ratio is very good. Somebody really needs to send an email to SD about this issue. Anybody up for it?

[ericjang]

As for Pay-Pal account donations on our website, the co-presidents are working with ASB to set up this feature- we have nothing to lose in this venture so it doesn't hurt to try.

[abu]

Hi Eric

This is Abdul by the way. I think we should focus on Club's Day a lot more this year. Many clubs earn up to $500 from 40 minutes of selling food. Last year we didn't participate at all. I think if we do it twice we can easily gain $800. Maybe we should bring up the topic on friday's meeting.

[ericjang]

Hey Abdul-
Wow! I didn't know they actually made that much money.
What did they sell?

[evelynchin]

i propose we sell taco bell.
cuz if we wanted to do in n out we'd have to wait a while for the orders.
and taco bell sells out pretty fast.

[abu]

Well Eric, most of them sold popular items, like root beer floats, chipotle, etc. However, I think we can get some money by selling the basics, like cookies and sodas. The most important thing is marketing. usually only the loud clubs got money, the quiet clubs were stuck. for example. The french honor society had bought cinnabuns, but they were quiet and didn'y yell loudly. In contrast, the muslim student association, a much small club, brought some Indian food, but they invited their friends and some teachers, as well as making themslevs heard, and the earned a solid $450. I am sure we can do better than a club with just 20 members!

[ericjang]

update: Pay-Pal is a no-go.
ASB has issues