Fundraising and Project/Team Management

Finding a Sponsoring Department

Open

• Are there members that have joined the University because of the Solar Car Team (more so for the teams in the US but something to thjink about for the future)

Open

• Be ready to present the execution plan, budget and timeline of the project

• Milestones → when it’s guaranteed you qualify for the race

  • this is a way for them to reduce their risks → could request this funding to help with logistics and race fees in this case too

Publicity

• Open houses to attract attention

• Found particular success with senior design engineering projects (i.e. did a certain project for the car) or intro level classes, which raised student awareness and awareness of the team in the school

• Coordinate with the school’s PR department to take the vehicle to publicity events

Corporate Monetary Sponsorships

• Matching donations - Apple has previously done a 2:1 matching, most do 1:1

  • leveraged connections that members had with employees at these companies

  • Katherine had her brother donate $10 from each paycheck (wow)

• Didn’t find as much success from local companies because they didn’t have as much leeway (this is pretty different from us haha)

• Always ask → monetary, in-kind, marketing/PR… Always think about what the company can help you with (specifics)

In-Kind Donations

• If a material expired recently, it’s probably okay for you

  • Can approach companies for these near-expired materials

• Had A123 donate the battery for their (Katherine’s team’s) car, also found a composite shop to help make the molds for their body

• SunPower has helped teams laminate their solar modules

Project Management

• As a team leader, it’s your responsibility to help overcome roadblocks and delegate responsibilities

• Want to have clear lists of executable actions where you understand the dependencies between the actions

  • If you’re making a solar car body, you need to consider the materials, tooling, labour, and a plan for acquiring them + the manufacturing time.

  • be sure to consider lead times and give your tasks extra time in their schedules

• Part of communicating the status goes to show sponsors that you will succeed and motivate team members to continue moving on their tasks

• Team leads need to support each team member on their tasks → do not micro-manage but help them bridge knowledge gaps

  • i.e. if you have a work session, make sure all the materials are present → you won’t waste your team members' time

• Understand what team members are capable of doing and what they WILL be capable of doing

  • Give everyone some sense of responsibility too

• Foster an inclusive team environment

• Hai-Yue found that many joined at the beginning but most dropped off (SAME FOR US)

  • Don’t be discouraged - this is natural

Solar Car Experience - Career Preparation/Application

Questions

When asking for donations, do you guys ask the company personally or do you have the business team to ask?

• If you have a business team, that’s great!

• If you have someone to be the company contact, you can cold-email or directly contact them if you have a lead

  • Should be trained in giving a business pitch

  • Have at least 1 contact person to coordinate with a company to discuss sponsorships and marketing (can follow-up in the future too when it comes time to renew)

• Also this message with new sponsors. I've frequently had new sponsors think that, what we do is the top picture. Making sure that companies/potential sponsors understand the full scale of the project is super helpful

Do you have any thoughts on fostering an engaged team environment during COVID?

• Set aside time to do team building activities virtually

• Have to be deliberate on how you maintain the environment

• Check-in with members often

• If someone is causing problems, you need to emphasize what behavior is appropriate and what environment you’re trying to foster

• try to foster some diversity → how can you make the team more welcoming to minorities (we’re pretty good with this actually)

Joining the questions on the team environment engagement, I found that it is possible to engage electrical division then the workplace is closed but the mechanical side is suffering due to lack of equipment. The question is: what are the possible ways that you can suggest to overcome that difficulty?

• Maybe have 3-D printing prototype tasks and can these members help out with other tasks (i.e. not just mechanical)

• Do these members have everything flushed out → they need to be able to hit the ground running when production / manufacturing resumes

  • i.e. in-kind sponsorships for material acquirement

  • Might be possible for some parts to be fabricated/assembled at home so keep that in mind

• You could also get them to spend some time learning new software. Does your team have a good grasp on CFD, FEA, Design, etc. etc? If they do, spend some time refining your knowledge on those topics, making sure you know to run optimized simulations, blah blah blah

Experience with Grants?

• SunPower has a foundation!

• Canadian team → had more success with corporate grants over government grants

How do you motivate a team of volunteers?

• People will be dedicated as much as they want to be - there aren’t a lot of knobs you can turn at the end of the day

• If you give someone a task off the go, they won’t accomplish it but what ends up helping is working side-by-side with that person while they’re working on the task

• Add more resources where needed if you can…