Raising money for your robotics team

David from the Arduino team writes –

I have been blogging a couple of times about the Complubot robotics team. It is the robotics team made of kids, based in Madrid, that has won the class B Soccer world championship the last 3 years. The team has existed for over 8 years and has until now had a list of dedicated sponsors to help them build the robots for the next competition.

It is a rule that the robots have to be build by the kids. The whole process is open source, since they kids have to present publicly how they made the robot as a proof they didn’t get any external help with it. I have been making personal donations to the team in the form of boards during the last year. Now, that all their big sponsors fell off, it has become time for crowdsourcing their activities.

This is a call for you all with either the materials or the money needed by this kids to get their robots running to donate. Please visit their website, get to know their story (EN, ES), and contribute! At their website you will as well find how to make your own Arduino based robot using servos, how kids can build Paperduino boards, or explanations to the way they teach algorithms using theater. Remember, 25Eur are cool, but 100Eur are much cooler … and even more when you know they will help these kids education.

You can visit the Complubot Robotics Team page here, along with their “ChipIn!” link. I’ve seen a lot of email / phone requests for funding robot teams, but the Complubot Robotics have one the better examples of fundraising for teams. I chipped in :)

At MAKE we also have a subscription plan. Details here.

2 years ago, we launched an exciting new program to allow FIRST robot teams, and any other group or club, to raise funds by selling subscriptions to MAKE. Here’s how it works:

• You email your contact information to makemoney@makezine.com (see details on the card above).
• We send your group a fundraising kit with subscription forms.
• You return the forms and subscription payments to us.
• We send you back a monthly check for 50% of all your sales.

Your team or club gets $17 for every subscription sold! And as an added incentive, the top team salesperson gets a $50 Maker Shed Gift Certificate! We’re (still) really excited by this. We think it’s a great way to capitalize worthy tech, science, civic, and social organizations, while expanding our subscriber base. If you participate, please tell us about your team/club/group in the comments and how much money you were able to raise.