Week Ten: The End

My final week has come to a very interesting end. This week the team has left the state to go participate in the first of three competitions. The day before they had to leave, the president, Jason, called me begging for all the interns to come help them. They were rushing to try and finish up the car since they were behind schedule. Although the place was hectic, I was able to learn how to vinyl wrap a car as well as grind cut large pieces of metal. I really hope the car this year exceeds everyones expectations. I'm not sure when I'll be able to post a picture of it, but trust me it looks amazing!

I am still a little disappointed with the fact that I wasn't able to help the team out with the presentation aspect for the competition. I tried my best to get them to make time for it, but they were too busy and far behind schedule on the car. Maybe I'll be able to come in in the future and help them for the future competitions. As for the online fund raising, that will continue to be up and running. It has already collected almost $1,000 in only a few weeks. It may not seem like much, but every dollar counts, and in the long run it'll be very beneficial to the team. The more the fundraising page spreads to more people, the more money it'll be making for the team. It's almost like an investment; put in some time and effort into it and let it make money for you. 

Is online fundraising more effective than the regular means of looking for donors? It honestly depends on the context. If you are a small group that is still trying to get on its feet, then yes online fundraising is a great way to raise money and get yourself known. But if you are already a stable group or company that has a good reputation, then it is a good idea to build those strong connections with larger corporations. That is what happened with a Baja Team last year. I'm not sure which school it was, but it was an Ivy League meaning that they were already well known. This allowed them to get a large sum of money from only one donor, and that was their only donor that year. So long story short, it all depends on your network and what connections you have.

Overall, it was a good experience. I learned a lot about cars and I learned a lot about how stressful it is to be in sales, so you will not find me majoring in that next year. I wish I was able to do more, but not everything goes the way it's planned, but thats how business is! Just got to stay on your toes and adapt to the situation. 

Week Nine: Crunch Time

The first competition is going to be next week! The team is rushing to finish last minute check ups on the car. I still can't show you guys what it looks like, but the team decided to go with black and gold and it is going to look great!

I do have some sad news though. Due to the lack of time and the fact that the team has focused too much on the car build and hasn't put in enough man power on the presentation, they are planning to use the powerpoint from last year. Even after all my attempts to get them to start working on the presentation, they still didn't figure anything out. I previously thought they already started a new one and that I would be able to help them out, but that wasn't the case. Since the competition is next week and they are leaving on the 11th of April, There isn't any time to create a completely new powerpoint. I've decided to take it upon myself and update the powerpoint that they currently have, but the team said only to change the visuals and not any of the actual wording. This really restricts the thinks I can do.

The online fundraiser is doing well. We have raised about $650 dollars within about 2 weeks which is far better than me just cold calling companies. I am still trying to get the word out about the fundraiser; trying to send it out to ASU Alumni who will be more willing to donate back to the college. So if anyone knows some ASU Alumni, please give them this link!

https://www.gofundme.com/wguk6m64

As for what I have been doing on-site, I was able to help the team out with Discovery Day at ASU. I was able to talk to a bunch of little kids and teach them about cars, so that was really exciting. The team brought out 3D printed gear boxes and had the kids take it apart and put it back together. I also got to help little kids get into the previous year Baja car. It was really cute seeing them pretending to drive the cars. Some of the kids tried to press the brake pedal, but the team didn't empty out the break fluid, so some kids ended up staining their pants with break fluid. I bet their parents won't be too happy about that. The other days that I was onsite, the team had me taking out the gear box and clutch and setting up the steering for the test car. And when the team didn't have any work for me or the rest of the interns (Arkesh, Farhan, and Nassim), we ended up cleaning everything up and organizing screws and other parts.

This has been a good second to last week for my SRP. I am still a little frustrated with the team about their procrastination on the presentation, but it's understandable since the car is more important. Hopefully next year they can recruit business students from ASU to help them out so that this doesn't repeat itself next year.

Week Eight: Presentation Time

https://www.gofundme.com/wguk6m64

^^
This is the webpage for the online fundraising campaign!! We already started getting in donors, which has been so much faster than me trying to call random companies for sponsorships. It's really fascinating how much technology can be used to raise money. It opens up opportunities for virtually everyone!

This week I actually got to help the team out with the car! I was able to help take the clutch and gear box out while also putting in some parts for the steering and pedals. Although I'm on the business side of the team, it is always fun to get some grease on my hands and work on the car. I would post some pictures, but I won't be able to till after the competition.

As for the business aspect, I was able to take a look at the previous year's powerpoint presentation. It was very well organized, but there is still a lot to be worked on. I hope to start working with the team on the new powerpoint and hopefully improve from the old one. My goal is to try to make the presentation a lot more clear and straight to the point so that anyone can take a look at the slides and immediately understand what is going on.

The SRP is slowly coming to an end, but I still have much more work to do! Please spread the word out about the online fundraising link!

Week Seven: Online Fundraiser is a Go!

This week was pretty exciting. I finally got online fund raising campaign up and running. I really hope this will give better results than the cold calls that I have been doing throughout my SRP. I will add the link to the page for anyone who wants to check it out once the team adds in some personal information to the account. Until then the page might not be completely up.

Since the online fundraiser is basically done, I will be starting to focus my work on the presentation aspect of the competition. I have been nagging my teammates about it for quite some time now, but they are very focused on finishing up the car. Hopefully they will start to work on the presentation soon since the competition is coming up soon.

Since I personally won't be with the team during the competition, I hope to get the team as prepared as possible. I want to teach them how to explain and answer questions in a more simple and straight to the point manner so that they can maximize their points earned in the competition. I plan to set up some mock presentations for them so that they get used to presenting. I may set up some public presentations so that the team learns to present in front of strangers, as well as explain the mechanics of the car to people who may not be knowledgable with the subject. It would also be a great event to get current and potential sponsors to come in a take a look at what the team has been doing for the past few months.

It's a lot of organization, but I hope the the rest of the college students will be nice to me and work with me on these goals. If we can set up these presentations, the chances of the team placing higher this year increases, and the chances of them getting more sponsorships increases as well!

Week Six: Test Week

The car is finally up and running, and the team is test driving the chassis of the car. I can't post any pictures just yet, but trust me it looks pretty cool.

As for sponsorships, I finally got the partnership with Curbell Plastics. It took a long time to process with many emails. It made me realize how much time these sponsorships take to create. At first I assumed it would only take about a week to set up, but they can take up to a month from what I have experienced.

Last Monday was a cool experience for me. I was invited to the ASU Tempe Campus to talk on a panel to other clubs about how to find sponsors and fund raise. It was really weird "teaching" other college kids on how to contact companies, especially when I've only been doing it for 5 weeks and haven't found much luck myself. It was still a good experience to have, and I was glad to be apart of the panel.

The team finally decided on which online fundraising platform to work on. I was working on a separate platform, so I have to scrap my progress and move my work from Indiegogo to Gofundme. We decided not to use the platform provided by ASU because we didn't want them to take a portion of the money we raised.

We are closing in on the competition date and the team really needs to start working on the presentation aspect of the competition. I am really pushing the team to start working on it now so that they cam be more prepared this year and increase their rankings. Hopefully I'll be able to help them out with the presentation in these next few weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Week Five: Spring Break

I hope everyone is having a good break this week. Since most people from the Baja Team are on vacation, I haven't been able to talk to many of them this week. From what I have heard and seen though is that the car is almost ready to be test driven so that is very exciting. 

As for my goal to find sponsors, I have been having some set backs. The emails and phone calls don't seem to be giving me the results I was hoping for. What I'm starting to realize is that if you don't have an actual contact in the company, cold calling is basically pointless except for a few exceptions. As a result of this, I am focusing more of my time on the online fundraising campaign. It is still unclear whether or not the team will choose to do it under ASU or not, but either way I plan to use outside sources as an extra way for the team to advertise themselves. I am not sure how well it'll work but my fingers are crossed. 

I will continue to keep everyone updated on my progress with the online fund raising. Until then, I hope everyone has a great Spring Break!

Week Four: Slow Week

This past week has been pretty stagnant. Not much has happened except for a ton of unanswered phone calls and emails. Raising money is a lot harder than I expected, but now I know not to ever go into the sales business.

One company did end up replying to me and seemed very willing to donate some materials to the team, but then the issue of delivery came up so now I'm trying to see if there is a way the material can get delivered properly. Other than that, I am still working on writing more emails to companies. I think that the main issue is that I have been using my own email and not a college email because when companies see the "edu" at the end of the email it shows some creditability. The team is working on getting a team email under ASU, but since the cub is a "third party", ASU hasn't been able to provide a proper email address.

I've finally been able to make some time with the team to work on the online fund raising campaign. There are still some issues to talk about though. The team is divided as to whether we should use the online platform from ASU or use other ones like Gofundme and Indiegogo. Both have its pros and cons, so we will hopefully decide which one is best for the team.

Apart from that, the team is working rigorously to get the car driving by Spring Break. This will allow them to get a lot of testing done to make sure the car is ready for the upcoming competitions. Hopefully the online fund raising platforms can begin to help the team in any way possible.