Honoring our commitments

Dearest PR and fundraising team,

First things first - I think you have done an amazing job given all the difficulties and constraints you are working with in order to support this robotics team. Raising more than $10,000 is not an easy thing, and whatever happens, remember that your efforts are recognized!

With that, I think we learned a lot about fundraising this year - especially about timing. I think we've learnt that we need to get started a lot earlier, especially with the constraints that we face at Castilleja.

The reason why I am motivated to write today is mainly because my heart hurts to think that we seriously upsetted a dear parent of robotics last night. The food donations have been critical to this team, but this is definitely something we could have secured in the off season (something to keep in mind for the next year). This dear parent had taken time off to make cookies, salad and the works just for us, only to find out after she had done so that we had Lulu's providing dinner last night. This is a real shame, and it speaks to our need for coordination between all parties and our need to try to bump up the timeline a little bit.

Everything that happens that's not rosy is an opportunity to learn from! I hope that we can work together next year to make doubly sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

Best of luck with all your other efforts!

Emily

Small gifts for small sponsors?

Is there anything we can give to our small sponsors ($25-$100) like the grocery store and the bagel people right off the bat? Like one of our buttons? Or a photograph of the team that they can stick to the wall? Perhaps we can take one of the kickoff photos and print it out in color with 'Proud sponsor of the Castilleja Robotics Team' on the top of it. That's a really easy token if immediate appreciation that we could give them for less than a buck each.

- Emily

Bagels and Shmear

A bagel shop has agreed to provide us with two dozen bagels and some cream cheese each Saturday for the six week season. We can pick the food up at 8:30.

Large donation from Sophia's Dad's company

I just wanted to mention and give kudos to Sophia and Sophia's dad for getting a wonderful sponsorship from Sophia's dad's company. As I understand it, it was enough to cover most of the registration fee for the year, if not all of it.

Cheers to the fundraising team!

Our First Food

We are still working feverishly to find food sponsors. However, we did get our first (very small) food donation today: $25 at a local grocery store. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. I'll be going to more places today and tomorrow. Luckily, we have parent support covering the first week of meetings.

This is where we'll be posting updates for PR and Finance. We shan't post anything too specific (such as exact companies), but we shall be updating people on things like "We now have food for these days a week." Have fun and start posting!