Thanks to help of Fundraise.com Robotics Team makes trek to St. Louis
A couple of weeks ago, the robotics team from Alton, New Hampshire, found out they had qualified for the World Championship for U.S. FIRST Robotics.
The problem is they only had seven days to raise the $10,000 needed to get to St. Louis. The registration fee alone was $5,000, and then there was another $5,000 in travel, hotel and incidentals to make the trip a reality.
Team 319, also known as "Big Bad Bob," raised almost $10,000 and it came from a variety of donors. The local school board in Barnstead gave an offline donation of $5,600, and then more than $4,000 came from donations as little as $10 to as much $200.
But the team headed out to St. Louis. Because of the last minute nature of the trip, they took a charter buss that took nearly 24 hours each way. They left on Tuesday, April 22, and returned back from the high school on Sunday, April 27.
Team 319 traveled about 2,400 miles in six days and traveled through nine states, and they came away finished 49th out 100 teams in their division and battled some of the best robots in the world. Some of the teams they went up against had six figure budgets for their robots and had major corporate sponsors like Boeing.
At the end of the day, the team is already looking forward to making the trip next year, and hopefully they will have a better outcome in St. Louis. And one thing is for sure, without the use of Fundraise.com and creating a fundraiser page and getting the word out on social media, the trip never would have happened.
The team has already started thinking about next year, and they always need to donations. To learn more about their fundraiser, visit: https://www.fundraise.com/first-robotics-team-319/first-robotics-team-319-world-championship-fundraiser?utm_source=created&utm_medium=f&utm_campaign=OCzB
To read more about the team's journey to St. Louis, click on this article from a weekly paper in New Hampshire that journeyed along with the team to St. Louis: http://www.newhampshirelakesandmountains.com/pdf/BAY.2014.05.01.pdf