Any advice for trying to land a manufacture sponsorship? GM, Ford, Etc?

[Goody]

As you may recall, we are a very young team [2nd year] at UNT. We have contacted the major automotive manufactures that we have seen on dozens of cars [and beyond that], GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda with absolutely no luck. Most have online submission forums that we have meticulously gone through trying to make sure we submit the most appealing request we can come up with. We've seen teams with 2-3 different major manufactures supporting them, so apparently the money is out there for FSAE teams in general.

I am just looking to see if there is another way we can try to tap into something that so many other teams do, if we're just flat-out missing something. I know sponsors are kept tightly to each team, we aren't looking for a hand out of information..but if it boils down to "my Dad is an engineer for Ford and got us in", well, we can't do much about that. At this time our advisor isn't involved with raising funds and our University doesn't have any contacts, to our knowledge, directly with manufactures. With the exception of Peterbilt, which is under PACCAR, which is who sponsored/donated the building our engineering facilities are in and we've been told will not directly support student organizations. Peterbilt does offer some services which we've used [5-axis milling for our body panel bucks] and also likes our guys for internships.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Michael Goodman
SAE UNT - President

[BillCobb]

Well it looks like you are about 30 minutes away from a major GM assembly plant (according to my door placard). Shirley you could try to get ahold of some plant execs to ship your car(s) to Milford for some K&C work, some tire testing, some road and track vehicle dynamics testing, some lessons in shock absorber performance, some structural analysis and maybe some multibody CarSim type stuff, just for the asking.

Go beg for a company internship for one of your team members and get a real education.

Use the Arlington Pony Express and Alumni Association to pull some serious strings.

Better yet, see If you can find an Alum who is on the GM Strategy Board or Board of Directors. Should I dare mention that this sure works for a local team? Fact is, I just gave a 'special' review to a local team from a city with the letters 'AA' at the request of a recently retired Chief Engineer (who is now a Professor at this very same university).

Go for it. There is more than one way to skin a cat. (That's a reference to a catfish just in case you didn't know).

No animals were maimed, disfigured, mutilated or had their feelings hurt by any claims made in this regard.

[Kirk Feldkamp]

Bill, you are one interesting dude. Your replies always crack me up.

Whenever you're pitching an idea to a potential sponsor/customer/client/whoever, you always need to be thinking about how it can mutually benefit them. Top level motorsports is an exercise in advertising and marketing, plain and simple. Without obscene amounts of money and/or parts from sponsors, professional motorsports simply wouldn't exist as far as I can tell. Essentially, sponsors are paying big bucks for positive attention toward their company logos. This is a very passive form of advertising, and is a very tough sell (at ANY level) unless you're dominating or in the Top 5 mix every race. Marketing departments look at things like how many viewers will be exposed to their images during a term of sponsorship, and how many of those are actually part of their target market. Unless you're somehow getting regular press for your FSAE team through mass media channels I don't know about, then you're probably not going to be able to pitch this route to most anyone. It's not impossible (school, local, and regional news media is starved for new, interesting stories), but it would take some effort to keep In the case of the big car companies you've mentioned, they're not actually advertising to car customers, they're advertising to YOU (the FSAE competitor) to think of them when it comes time to get a job.

Herein lies the biggest benefit you can pitch to any company: the team members! Many companies spend inordinate amounts of money finding, evaluating, and securing quality engineers. In my mind, the biggest benefit you can give a company is direct access to your graduating team members. If you can convince companies that they can save time/money by knowing they're going to be able to snag the brightest and most motivated team members (that they've been interacting with and evaluating for years), then they should be plenty willing to pay for that access (essentially). KLA Tencor, one of our major sponsors for the last 6 years, has done exactly that! I think we have had upward of 10 people working there at any given time, as well as many summer internships. They fully recognize that the price to pay headhunters to find good engineers is much more than the relatively paltry sum that keeps a FSAE team running smoothly... assuming they can continue to recruit quality grads. In other words, what you have to pitch is that by giving your team money, they actually SAVE money in the long term! You can always add on the media exposure benefit above as an added bonus, but that's more "feel good" than anything. No matter how you slice it, if you're going to go with the access angle, you need to maintain strong ties with the company. It helps immensely if they're local and would be willing to, say, sit in on design reviews and things like that. They can then see progress (what their money is directly going to), see who the strong team members are (who they are going to want to recruit), and also potentially be able to provide advice and/or training in engineering or management areas that the team may need help with (bonus!). This sort of a close relationship can really pay dividends for both sides!

-Kirk

[Claude Rouelle]

Simple observation; What is UNT?

How am I (and other people) supposed to know?

First thing to do if you want to find sponsor is to identify yourself properly/

[Mbirt]

Get involved with your school's corporate relations office now because they might be fishing for your team's sponsor contacts someday. They're always looking for ways to increase corporate giving and your team and its graduates might look great in a proposal to a potential donor. By giving them access to your team, you can propose that you get a cut of the money. That's often the case when you see big names like GM Foundation and Denso on other schools' FSAE cars--we're really just getting a small chunk of the giant pile of cash the school was receiving for things like diversity programs and high school robotics competitions. Other (service) sponsorships come as Bill described--knowing contacts and building goodwill gets you K&C, wind tunnel time, etc.

[Claude Rouelle]

To Goody,

I do apologize to you. Your UNT identification WAS at the bottom of your post. I did read and reacted to your post too quickly. My bad

[Canuck Racing]

Start small and grow. The big companies you mention probably have no interest in helping a small start up team and receive hundreds of email a day looking for and expecting handouts. As Mr. Cobb mentioned, your best bet is go go and talk to people individually. Find a small mom and pop machine shop that can help you out. Call your local safety-gear distributor. Attend some trade shows and collect as many business cards as possible.

Also, I'm sure that local GM plant has a machine shop of some sort. Find out who is in charge and see if they could make a few simple parts (don't ask for too much right out of the gate.) You don't need the blessing from GM corporate if the supervisor is on board, says it's okay and they have open machines (don't ask don't tell - I'm sure the UAW guys would love to make a "race car part" over another replacement bracket for whatever machine broke...)

Show up to competition next year car or not to meet with people. A lot of companies send representatives -typically FSAE alum who come back to judge - around even if they aren't a registered sponsor.

And finally Bill, his name is not Shirley.

[BillCobb]

Since he's probably from Texas, it's not Rembrandt, Gaylord, Skylar, Duncan or Moon Unit, either.

It was comma a Siri figure of speech.

I apologize for all my faults.

There are a few Tier-1 auto parts suppliers near there that ought to be able to help you too...

[Goody]

Hey now, I'm not "from" Texas, I just live here!

Thank you very much for all of the replies, the GM plant in Arlington is something I completely overlooked; likely because they're seconds away from UTA and I figured the GM decal on their cars had something to do with that. However, that's not a good enough reason to try and I will definitely pursue it.

We initially tried the straight sponsorship approach and have since started warping our way into selling potential engineers and that seems to be helping. Ingersoll Rand will be here tomorrow to speak with our team and check out our facilities and seems to be interested in that perspective.

Thank you again for the help.