December 14th (Saturday) - Funding Garage to host seminar at Justice Brothers Racing Museum for SoCal Collegiate Design Projects and the Automotive Industry (RSVP)

What: Funding Garage training session for SoCal collegiate design projects such as Formula SAE and SAE Baja
When: Saturday, December 14th. 9:00 am - lunchtime
Where: Justice Brothers Museum, 2734 Huntington Drive, Duarte, CA 91010
Who:

• Schools: CSUF, CSULB, and UCI will be our pilot program schools for December 14th
• Others: SoCal automotive/motorsports industry professionals

Why: To help engineering students compete more effectively:

1. To utilize the collegiate engineering network to help solve industry problems
2. To help industry establish relationships with future industry leaders
3. To help SEMA members establish better relationships with SAE and OEMs

How: Funding Garage has a working outline for how student projects can raise money. We need industry and educational professionals to help fill in the details for maximum mutual benefit.

RSVP

http://fgjusticebrothers.eventbrite.com

Details:  Companies and partners in the Automotive Industry are welcomed to an invite-only seminar to learn about how the Funding Garage's Fundraising for Educational Competition Model allows businesses to show support for educational initiatives while achieving marketing objectives, increasing sales potential, and engaging high potential students for talent recruitment.

Background: Funding Garage Inc. helps high school and college students fund raise for educational competition. Funding Garage believes in supporting project based educational competitions as early as high school level. The future of the automotive industry depends on the talents going through educational programs. By exposing future talent to hands on learning through competition, it reinforces in real life situations what is learned on the textbook in the classrooms.

Challenge: One of the biggest challenge student teams has is raising funds for competition. Less and less companies are willing to provide monetary support to student teams in trade for a sticker on the side of a race car. Big educational institutes like University of Arizona participates in FormulaSAE only every other year. Funding Garage provides a tool for students to effectively raise funds, reduces the burden on competition hosts the need to heavily subsidize teams, and furthermore allows business affiliates that elect to get involved to spread brand awareness and hit marketing objectives through partnership with student's school and community via FG's unique sponsorship program.

Reference:

• The Funding Garage Educational Competition Fundraising Model
• Step-by-step Instructions: Business Affiliate Signup for Educational Competition
• Step-by-step Instructions: Fundraising for Educational Competition - Team Signup

Contact:
info@fundinggarage.com
310.853.3088

RSVP: http://fgjusticebrothers.eventbrite.com

LA Auto Show 2013 in Pictures - Funding Garage Inc.

Los Angeles Auto Show 2013

- Funding Garage Inc -

The Funding Garage Educational Competition Fundraising Model

Background: Funding Garage believes in supporting project based educational competitions as early as high school level. The future of the automotive industry depends on the talents going through educational programs. By exposing future talent to hands on learning through competition, it reinforces in real life situations what is learned on the textbook in the classrooms.

Challenge: One of the biggest challenge student teams has is raising funds for competition. Less and less companies are willing to provide monetary support to student teams in trade for a sticker on the side of a race car. Big educational institutes like University of Arizona participates in FormulaSAE only every other year. Funding Garage provides a tool for students to effectively raise funds, reduces the burden on competition hosts the need to heavily subsidize teams, and furthermore allows business affiliates that elect to get involved to spread brand awareness and hit marketing objectives through partnership with student's school and community via FG's unique sponsorship program.

Qualification: Funding Garage partners with organizations, businesses, or educational institutions that wants to host an inaugural educational competition or has an on-going educational competition where student teams (high school or college level) are required to raise money, build a project, and compete with each other in a hands-on learning environment.

Examples of partnership with current educational competition host include:

• UC Irvine Energy Invitational Program
• University of Arizona Racing the Sun Solar Go-Kart Challenge
• Southern California Collegiate Engineering Design Competition
• Hot Rod Power Tour High School Build Competition (2014 prospect)
• SEMA Educational Institute Innovation Challenge (2014 prospect)

- How to Get Started -

Prospective Educational Competition Hosts:

• Determine the scope of your competition (regional or national, complexity of projects, number of teams, level of funds required to be raised by teams, etc)
• Establish communication with desired business affiliates within your network and get buy-in for supporting student teams in fundraising for competition
• Note: Funding Garage will manage the responsibility of helping student teams with fundraising for the competition. 

Prospective Educational Competition Sponsors:

• Determine what type of product, services, promo items, special events, or offerings you are willing to provide to student teams to help build your company brand awareness and meet your marketing needs
• Determine if you will be offering your support to the educational competition host, the entire student population, and/or a specific student team
• Note: Monetary contributions to student teams are not required: think about how students can utilize the merchandises and promotional items you give them for free or relatively inexpensively to entice the community to contribute donations to the project in return for the goodies.

- Educational Workshop #1: Intro to Community Fundraising & Four Tips of Crowdfunding -

Prospective Educational Competition Hosts:

• Work with Funding Garage and the participating student teams to schedule Workshop #1 to introduce to students the concept of community fundraising platform and educate them on how to effectively run a fundraising campaign. Plan for a 4 hour fun and engaging workshop.
• Note: Funding Garage will provide resources to lead the 4 hour workshop

Prospective Educational Competition Student Teams:

• To start your fund raising journey with Funding Garage, it is critical that you invite all affected students and faculty instructors to attend Workshop #1; you will be introduced to the concept of crowdfunding and understand how you can create an effective fundraising campaign
• Pre-work prior to Workshop #1: Read and follow the pre-work instruction document

Prospective Educational Competition Sponsors:

• Register on Funding Garage Website: Step-by-step instruction
• After deciding what promo items or merchandises you want to contribute to help student team raise funding for educational competition, create a blog post that shows pictures of what you're offering, description of the items, and how students can request for them. 
• Note: Students will be using the promo items and merchandises provided to them to thank contributors for donating money to their project. Think about items of high consumer value (autographed posters, key chains, company apparel, tickets to private events, company tour, etc) but negligible cost to your company. Be creative and let your brand spread out to the student's schools and communities.

Workshop Content:

• Workshop 1 - PPT Presentation- Intro to Community Fundraising & Four Tips of Crowdfunding.pdf
• Workshop 1 - Student Suggested Venue/Rewards/Target Audience

- Educational Workshop #2: Registering and Launching Fundraising Campaign -

Prospective Educational Competition Hosts:

• Work with Funding Garage and the participating student teams to schedule Workshop #2 to walk the students through registering, setting up project page, and launching fundraising campaign. Plan for a 4 hour fun and engaging workshop.
• Note: Funding Garage will provide resources to lead the 4 hour workshop

Prospective Educational Competition Student Teams:

• To launch your fundraising campaign, you are invited back to attend Workshop #2; we will work together to help you register, setup project page, and launch your fundraising campaign.
• Pre-work prior to Workshop #2: Read Step-by-step Instructions: Fundraising for Educational Competition - Team Signup
• Proactively reach out to Educational Competition Sponsors on Funding Garage to 

Prospective Educational Competition Sponsors:

• By now you should have created a blog post capturing the level of support you are willing to offer to student teams and event organizers.
• Check out different student projects on www.fundinggarage.com and reach out to teams that you would like to partner with.
• Note: Funding Garage will also put you in touch with students from this workshop to initiate conversation.

- Further Workshops: Knowledge Sharing -

Prospective Educational Competition Hosts:

• Work with Funding Garage, the participating student teams, and sponsors to schedule further workshops to allow students and sponsors to interact and transfer knowledge.
• Examples: Air intake companies like K&N can host a workshop on intake airflow design, Brembo on sizing the appropriate brake system, Eibach on suspension design, Mazda on overall design of the vehicle

Prospective Educational Competition Sponsors:

• You have the opportunity to further interact with the student population by hosting workshops on topics related to your business core competencies.
• Note: Treat this interaction as an opportunity to further promote your brand into the student base as well as to scout future high-potential talents 

Step-by-step Instructions: Business Affiliate Signup for Educational Competition

Why Funding Garage: Whether your company already support SAE Collegiate Competition, solar car challenge, etc, or want to start offering support to educational competition, Funding Garage allows business affiliates that elect to get involved to spread brand awareness and hit marketing objectives through partnership with student's school and community via FG's unique sponsorship program.

Background: Funding Garage believes in supporting educational competitions. The future of the automotive industry depends on the talents going through educational programs. By exposing future talent to hands on learning through competition, it reinforces in real life situations what is learned on the textbook in the classrooms.

Steps:

- Register for New User Account -

• Visit: www.FundingGarage.com and click the "Register" button on the top right of the page

• Fill out all of the required fields (*) on the registration page and click the "Sign up" button

- Affiliate Signup -

• Click the "Affiliates" button in the top left of the navigational bar

• Click the "Affiliate Signup" button on the right side of the page

• Fill out all of the required fields (*)

• Upload project image (NOTE: make sure your picture meets the suggested size of 260x180px)

• Choose the category that fits your business (for supporting educational competition typically you would choose "Marketing and Promotions")

• Once you've completed all required entries, click the "Create Affiliate" button

Your new affiliate account will be reviewed by Funding Garage and approved (if appropriate) within 24-72 hours after you have submitted your project.

- Add or Edit Blogs -

If you intend on offering to student teams promo items or merchandises to help them raise funding for educational competition, make sure you create a blog that shows pictures of what you're offering, description of the items, and how students can request for them.

• Click on your business affiliate from the homepage
• Click the "Edit Affiliate Details" link on the right navigation window

• Click the "Edit Blog Posts" link on the right navigation window

• New Blog Post: Fill out the required fields and click the "Create Blog post" button

• Edit Blog Post: Navigate to the blog you would like to edit and click the button "Edit" to edit the entry or "Destroy" to delete the blog forever

Step-by-step Instructions: Fundraising for Educational Competition - Team Signup

Why Funding Garage: Raising funds for educational competition is one of the biggest challenge each team faces every year. Whether you’re participating in SAE Collegiate Competition, Solar Car Racing, or other educational competitions, you can utilize our community fundraising platform to create and place a fundraising campaign directly on your student or school’s website, process secure transactions via PayPal and/or credit card with only a few clicks, and the best feature of all is the ability for you to offer rewards to people that contribute to your campaign.

Background: Funding Garage believes in supporting educational competitions. The future of the automotive industry depends on the talents going through educational programs. By exposing future talent to hands on learning through competition, it reinforces in real life situations what is learned on the textbook in the classrooms.

Steps:

- Register for New User Account -

• Visit: www.FundingGarage.com and click the "Register" button on the top right of the page

• Fill out all of the required fields (*) on the registration page and click the "Sign up" button

- Start a Campaign -

• Click the "Start New Campaign" button in the top center of the homepage

• Fill out all of the required fields (*)

Name: Title of your project

Headline: Subtitle of the project

About: This should be a one sentence summary of the purpose of your project

• Upload project image (NOTE: make sure your picture meets the suggested size of 260x180px)

• Choose the category that fits your campaign (for educational competition typically you would choose "Sponsorship")

• Create your first blog post. The first blog post should be a detailed description of your project where you explain to the world what you are trying to achieve and what help do you need from the community.

• Once you've completed all required entries, click on the "Create Project" button

Your new campaign will be reviewed by Funding Garage and approved (if appropriate) within 24-72 hours after you have submitted your project.

- Add or Edit Blogs -

Keep your project page updated with the latest information. 

• Click on your project from the homepage
• Click the "Edit Project" link on the right navigation window

• Click the "Edit Blog Posts" link on the right navigation window

• New Blog Post: Fill out the required fields and click the "Create Blog post" button

• Edit Blog Post: Navigate to the blog you would like to edit and click the button "Edit" to edit the entry or "Destroy" to delete the blog forever

- Embed Project as iframe on Website -

You have the ability to embed your fundraising campaign on any website that allows iframe. 

• Click the "Project Widget Code" link on the right navigation window

• Copy the iframe code and paste into desired location on your preferred website

- Submit Fundraising Proposal -

Prior to creating your fundraising proposal, review the following items:

1. Read the "4 Tips of Community Fundraising" Presentation
2. Brainstorm with your team: "Target Audience, Rewards, Venue"
3. Watch the "Sunswift Crowdfunding" video 
4. Brainstorm how you would make your fundraising video

When you have completed your list of rewards and finalized your video, here's how you would submit your funding proposal.

• Click on your project from the homepage
• Click the "Edit Project" link on the right navigation window

• Click the "Fund My Project" link on the right navigation window



• Fill out the required fields (*)

Proposal For Funding: This is your pitch to the community. Check out Cienega High School "Fundraising" tab for reference. Make sure to include your video, text describing what you're looking for from the community, and the descriptions of the rewards you are offering in return for contributions.

• Note: A video is required to be considered for approval. Please be aware that the video must be hosted online (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo). To embed your video, simply paste the entire URL of the video (i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLbsnxYPGZw). Do not use <iframe> or <embed> codes.

Funding Goal ($): Enter number only: set your goal realistically and do not overestimate. Campaigns that fail to reach funding goal will not receive partial funding.

Campaign Length (Days): Carefully select the length of your campaign. Suggestion: 30-45 days.

Confirmed Paypal Email Address: This address needs to be a valid PayPal email address. Be sure to use the appropriate PayPal address so that the funds raised would go to the correct account after it is awarded. This may be your teacher's, school's, districts, or the racing organization's PayPal account.

• Fill out the "Rewards" you will be offering - Suggestions of potential rewards:
• Souvenirs: Personalized t-shirts, hats, hoodies, jackets
• Behind-the-scene: access to information, pictures, videos
• Exclusive access: invitation to test-and-tune days, pit passes, celebration party
• Merchandise from business partners: negotiated prizes from local or national businesses you can offer on behalf of them (i.e. promo items, discount services, etc). 
• Note: Funding Garage has strong partnership ties with automotive OEM, aftermarket, and suppliers within its Business Affiliation. Contact Funding Garage for an opportunity to pitch ideas to its affiliates.

Minimum value: The value of the reward can be anywhere from $1 and up. Make sure you price the rewards appropriately to cover the expense to create the reward as well as other costs such as shipping.

Maximum backers: If you want to limit the number of backers for specific reward, you can place a number in this field. Leave it blank if you have unlimited number of this reward to give.

Description: Tell your contributor what you're offering them. Be specific and attractive in your description.

• Submit your funding proposal by reading the terms and agreement and clicking the "Create Funding Proposal" button on the bottom

Your new funding proposal will be reviewed by Funding Garage and approved (if appropriate) within 24-72 hours after you have submitted your funding proposal.

Funding Garage Finishes Top 5 in the SEMA Launch Pad Competition

SEMA Show, Las Vegas - November, 2013

Funding Garage's CEO, Dominic Lin, Delivers Speech on Promoting Innovation and Educational Competition at SEMA Show 2013

Dominic Lin, founder and CEO of Funding Garage Inc. received the honor of being a top five finalist in the 2013 SEMA Launch Pad Competition that celebrated the automotive industry’s brightest and most promising young entrepreneurs. The event was hosted by the SEMA Young Executive Network (YEN).

Below is the written speech Lin prepared and delivered for the panel of industry judges: Jim Liaw, president of Formula Drift; Doug Evans, executive vice president and group publisher for Source Interlink Media; Ronald L. Coleman, ownership partner, president and CEO of COMP Performance Group; Greg Adler, president and CEO of Transamerican Auto Parts; and Jeffrey Yapp, vice president of global automotive engineering and operations for UPS.

Hi my name is Dominic Lin and I am here to speak to you about Funding Garage Inc. I am here to share with you two things that are important to me today, and I want to start by asking you how much money do you think it takes college students to operate a college Formula SAE team each year? $2000? $5000? Our study shows that it takes anywhere from $20,000 to $80,000 or more to fully operate as a team annually. No wonder there are schools that simply do not have the resources to participate in these hands-on experiences. Even large institutions like University of Arizona Formula SAE team is on a rotating two years program; one year they are doing development, one year they compete. Why? because they simply cannot afford to race every year. Students are missing out, and it is our obligation to change that for the betterment of our future. 

Funding Garage believes in supporting educational competitions. The future of the automotive industry depends on the talents going through educational programs. By exposing future talent to hands on learning through competition, it reinforces in real life situations what is learned on the textbook in the classrooms.   

As an industry we constantly celebrate innovations around the world. There are Automotive Achievement Awards like the AOL Technology of the Year Award, SPE Innovations Award, PACE Awards, SEMA New Product Award which focuses on celebrating achievements in the OEM and Supply Base. There are also Incentivized Prize Awards like XPrize, DARPA Challenge, which allows universities and companies to compete in a mission driven environment. 

However, there’s an area that I believe is consistently being neglected; it's the area of emerging disruptive technologies. Innovations in this area don’t typically qualify for Automotive Achievement Awards because they are not yet installed on production vehicles, and most of the times they also don’t always qualify for Incentivized Prize Awards because they don’t fit the criteria the competition is looking for. I recently met a driven, passionate entrepreneur that developed a voice system that outperforms Siri, can you imagine that? Why is it taking him and his talented team of developers almost a decade to get noticed by the automakers? There’s an invisible wall that people just can’t break through! 

Funding Garage believes in building a robust pathway for high potential disruptive technologies to get the resources they need in order to rapidly reach commercialization. 

I founded the Funding Garage Movement a year ago, and with a motivate team of trusted board members we went after the mission to solve these problems that are plaguing the innovation pipeline. Do you know why these schools are having such a problem fundraising for their projects? A few months ago I randomly visited three Formula SAE team websites and tried to give money away, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how. Finally I found one Formula SAE team website that had a link to the university’s e-giving service but wow did it remind me of filling out a college application. The donation process is inefficient and not sexy at all. Funding Garage is changing all of that.  

With our community fundraising platform students can embed the fundraising campaign directly on their website, process secure transactions via Paypal and/or credit card with only a few clicks, and the best feature of all is the ability to pair unique rewards with different levels of contribution. If donating $500 means I can take the FormulaSAE car out for a spin at a local autocross event, I might just do it! We are launching a series of workshop in collaboration with the Southern California Performance Educational Organization as well as Vital Link of Orange County to help 30+ high schools and colleges raise funding for educational competition using the community fundraising platform on Funding Garage. We also offer resources beyond fundraising during these workshops to assist teams on the car building process. 

Automotive companies love disruptive innovations so much that in the past five years most of the major automakers established research labs in Silicon Valley to get visibility to them. I hope that means soon we will be able to use Touch ID to start a car and have a driver facing camera built in the dashboard to do video conferencing with your kids while you travel on business.  

Nissan-Renault and Delphi just opened doors earlier this year. With the automakers opened-arm and eager to engage in the start-up world of the tech industry, most inventors are wondering how to actually get some seat time with them. In collaboration with these companies, Funding Garage plans to launch a series of Innovation Invitationals in 2014; establishing Funding Garage as the world’s largest dating site for disruptive entrepreneurs and auto companies. People with innovations in development will have an opportunity to submit their portfolios and funding proposals for evaluation with participating auto companies and a chance to be awarded financial, material, or knowledge resources as an end result. Through our affiliate Auto Harvest, they will also get connections with key resources within the industry.

We have to recognize a couple of things here. The students of today will be the professionals of tomorrow. Disruptive technologies of today will become the mainstream features of the vehicles in the future. It is our obligation as a community to find ways to encourage innovation through competition and furthermore provide the opportunity for the best technologies to surface to the top. 

If you are interested in knowing more about me, my team, or want to get involved with the Funding Garage Movement, I would be glad to speak with you.