Getting Sponsors as an STEM Racing

Starting and STEM Racing Team is honestly, quite a nightmare. From the logistics to the engineering to everything else. However, the undoubtedly most difficult part of making an STEM Racing team to compete will be gaining sponsors, especially if you are going straight to the world finals.

What to Do First

Before getting into finding sponsors, the first thing to do will be to make a budget and a plan, but how do we build a budget anyways? Like what do we need for an STEM Racing?

Making a Budget

To make a budget the first things you need to get done are the most basics:

• Way to make the car (Buy a CNC? Outsource? Buy a 3D printer?)

• Way to build the pit display

• Way to go to the event

Additionally, adding some fees for marketing or subscriptions to software you may be using including canva or wix, then some more for perhaps tools and equipment, maybe for uniforms as well, and your budget will be made!

Set yourself a minimum goal, a maximum goal, and a 'I'll settle for this' goal. This will become important as it will be a good idea to say that you 'need' this maximum goal when the absolute minimum is the minimum goal: and by having plans in case too much money is made (actually could be a problem) will help out.

Making Sponsorship Plans

Next, since most, if not all of the income will be from sponsors (and perhaps some crowdfunding or donations for individuals) you will need to estimate how many sponsors you will need in order to achieve the final goal. A good idea will be a sponsorship hierarchy, which will be something along the lines of: Title sponsor (They get to name the team), platinum, gold, etc... and each needing to pay a certain amount.

Estimate how much of each sponsor you will get, and make a plan so that you will overshoot the amount of money needed, because, estimates are usually way to optimistic.

Make sure to have returns on investment, which would mainly be advertising the company on the uniform or social media.

Making the Prospectus

Making the sponsor prospectus is the most important and difficult part of the entire process. It essentially is a paper that tries to convince companies to pay a student team quite a hefty sum of money in return of quite literally nothing. In order to do this, a balance between dreaming and being professional needs to be achieved.

The dream is necessary, as these companies are paying for the future generation, which is really a dream for them. Outlining how your team can impact the world around, essentially a dream, is extremely important. However, at the same time you need to be professional as they need to be able to trust you as a human being. Usage of data and logical reasoning is important but at the same time, making others feel emotionally attached, is very important as well.

After making the prospectus, prepare a presentation which will go more in depth on each section and about everything. Here, make sure to attack the more emotional side, as being in person and presenting can more easily evoke emotions rather than just on paper. Practice, practice, practice, until you are confident that you can convince some important people.

Finding Potential Sponsors

There are two ways of finding sponsors: the first being through connections you already have, maybe your dad's friend owns a company and is willing to sponsor your team, maybe you've participated in another competition and you've met someone there who is willing to help young students. The second is simply through sending a lot of emails. While this is definitely more slow and costly, this will also probably be necessary unless you have a massive network of people. Make sure to ask people you see if they also know someone else they could help your team.

LUCK

I would like to say one thing at the end of this, which is, that LUCK is SUPER important in this process. You may end up being sponsored by a company because you ran into a CEO one day or because they really liked F1, or maybe they were an STEM Racing Alumni. Be hopeful and never give up and eventually luck will be on your side.