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