Cienega Bobcats Finished In A Tie For First Place (Endurance) at the 2014 U of A Competition

Busy Race Week!

Wow, what a week for the Solar Go-Kart Club! First off it was the scramble to get the Solar Go-Kart finished for a lunch time for a showing at the UofA Tech Park, on the Wednesday before the race, for the Tech Park companies - whew made it! On the way back to school in the truck, the wind whipped-up and the solar panel on our Kart suffered some minor damage. Students sprang in to action and burned the midnight oil to get the Solar Go-Kart ready for the next "show" of race week - TV news crew and interviews. KVOA 13 came to Cienega early Friday morning, the day before the race, to film and interview students about the Solar Go-Kart. TV reporter Maria Hechanova did six different live spots with students and the Kart to promote the " UofA Racing the Sun Challenge" Below is our Solar Go-Kart president Maria with TV Maria.

Race day was very interesting! There was lots of competitors from other schools, and there is a reason the race is run - variables on race day like the weather, schedule and luck. The pictures below were taken on race day at Muscleman Honda Circuit.







The Cienega Solar Go-Kart ran in the modified chassis class and finished in a tie for first place in the endurance race. Students learned a bunch about how solar works, engineering and fabrication, and had fun doing it. The race day weather was cloudy and windy, but the thrill of the competition with all the other schools, plus having the Kart run well was very exciting.





Thank you to all of our supporters, sponsors, the UofA Tech Parks, and Funding Garage for helping us design, fund, build and race this Kart!

Meguiar's Car Car Products Supports Next Generation Automotive Enthusiasts

Meguiar's support for the Funding Garage CDS Pilot to help students raise money for educational competition has been a big differentiator that contributed to their crowdfunding success. To date Cal State Long Beach had successfully raised $5560 and Cal State Fullerton surpassed their $3000 fundraising goal.

Quote from RJ:
"Meguiar's is honored to support Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton's Formula SAE projects," said RJ De Vera, Leader of Meguiar's Customer Engagement Group. "As a company, it's important to us that we encourage the next generation of car fans and fuel their passion for the automobile. These future industry professionals will help shape the car hobby of tomorrow."

About Meguiar’s
For over 100 years, Meguiar's has provided Car Crazy people with specialized state-of-the-art formulations for making every car’s appearance show car perfect. Meguiar's provides high performance products for every automotive surface.  For in-depth product information, company history, hi-res images and more, please visit the Meguiar’s Electronic Press Room at www.meguiarsmedia.com. (Username: meguiars/ Password: media). For more information, please call Meguiar's at 800-347-5700 or visit Meguiar's at www.meguiars.com.

[Video] Cal State University - Fullerton students speaking from their hearts about their Formula race car building program

Students at Cal State Fullerton have launched a crowdfunding campaign on Funding Garage in support of their FormulaSAE program. A week into the campaign they are at 12% to their fundraising goal and continue to seek the support form the automotive community.



From their latest blog on Funding Garage: "We can spend long nights designing, early morning manufacturing but without your help with funding there is no way we could build this car. We consider everyone that donates a part of our team and cant wait to show show everyone what we build together!"

You can support their team while getting some pretty cool rewards in return such as:
Meguiar’s “Brilliant Solutions New Car Kit”
Pirelli tire pressure gauges
Official Team Hoodie
Pace Car rides at Irwindale Speedway ; and more!

Check out their crowdfunding page on Funding Garage at http://www.fundinggarage.com/projects/cal-state-fullerton-fsae-traveling-team

College Students Crowdfund to Offset Cost of Motorsports Competition

The students at Cal State Long Beach are moments away from completing a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise money to offset the cost of traveling to motorsports competition.

Read about their crowdfunding campaign here.

Every year, over 100+ schools participate internationally in the Collegiate Design Series competition hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Specifically Cal State Long Beach students compete in both FormulaSAE (tarmac) and BajaSAE (off-road) where they are responsible for designing, fabricating, racing, and servicing race cars from scratch each year.

The CSULB team, lead by Eric Camacho and Kyle O'Rourke, have selected Funding Garage to take the journey with them for this fundraising effort, and based on the overwhelming response from the automotive community they will be reaching their fundraising goal with plenty of days left to collect additional contributions from onlookers.

To thank the contributors (people that donate to their campaign), the students are offering rewards such as team decals, hats, shirts, calendars, work gloves, and even a chance to advertise on their cars.



Unique to this campaign is the support CSULB students have received from the Automotive Industry; Meguiar's Car Car Products who donated an Ultimate Car Care Kit, Pirelli Tires who donated tire pressure gauges, and Irwindale Speedway that offered the opportunity for selected contributors to wave a flag and ride in a pace car during a live weekend racing event. You can purchase raffle tickets for a chance to win these items above at this website.

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.

Justice Brothers Museum in Pictures - Funding Garage Inc.

Privately Guided Tour of the Justice Brothers Museum 2013
by Ed Justice Jr.

- Funding Garage Inc -

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