Raising funding for southern California schools participating in educational competition

In collaboration with students from Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, and UC Irvine, Funding Garage has launched a pilot fundraising program to help these college teams offset the costs of building Formula SAE racing cars to compete in the Collegiate Engineering Design Competitions organized by the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). 

Student teams need to raise anywhere from $20,000 to $80,000 or more to compete each year, and because a majority of the competing schools lack a reliable source of returning sponsors, fundraising is critically important. Typically, fundraising is conducted through traditional means such as sending proposals to local sponsors, selling baked goods, or sometimes even collecting money from participating students.

Fundraising Landscape
The recent introduction of internet crowdfunding platforms (kickstarter, Funding Garage) has transformed the fundraising experience by widening the donor population. Crowdfunding gives students the opportunity to easily collect funds from alumni, friends and family (and even strangers!) via the internet. Fundraisers pair unique rewards such as team T-shirts, hats, or thank you cards with different levels of contribution while funds are collected securely via credit cards from supporters anywhere around the world at anytime. For student teams that are using crowdfunding platforms, their challenge has now shifted to coming up with attractive rewards to lure as many potential contributors within the time limit of the campaign.

Industry Involvement
The automotive industry and associated businesses are in the unique position of being able to positively impact student fundraising efforts via branded apparel such as hats, T-shirts and jackets, exclusive tours of motorsport facilities and car museums, access to motorsport celebrities, and collectible items such as posters, key rings and flash drives. Allowing student teams to offer these valuable items as rewards, greatly increases the success rate of fundraising campaigns.

In return, companies that get involved have an opportunity to engage with future industry leaders, recruit students for future employment, and spread brand awareness of their products and services to a broad segment of the car-buying public.

Get Involved
For the month of January, Funding Garage will be seeking industry partners to join the pilot program in support of collegiate educational competitions. If you are interested in participating or know a company that would be interested, please send an email to info@fundinggarage.com.

Funding Garage is the world's #1 online community fundraising platform for anything automotive.