Yes, it was Cory and myself that handled the bulk of the fundraising, cash and prizes.

A good chunk of our cash came from local companies i.e. all the ones the committee members worked for and a few that just heard about the event via one of our flyers posted around town and in peoples in-boxes, those were the easy ones, they came to us.  The local sponsors accounted for nearly half of our cash based revenue.   The rest came from the commercial vendors.  We simply made a list (in Excel) of all the vendors we could think of and then scoured their websites looking for contact information and sent them an e-mail (SPAM fashion) letting them know we were looking for sponsors.  I did personalize each SPAM e-mail a bit to match the vendor.   We then spent the next several weeks answering lots of questions from potential sponsors.   We probably had about a 30% success rate i.e. 3 out of every 10 vendors we contacted signed up.    The .Net vendors are the most responsive as you can see from our web site, most of the vendor sponsors on our web site sell .Net based technologies.  I do not know why that is just reporting the facts.   The tech schools are go to hit up as well, we always have a couple of them sign up too.   

Having a designated business checking account and credit card services was a big help too, we use NetDUG’s as you might remember.   A lot of vendors do not like writing checks or sending their credit card info to personal accounts and a few wanted an EIN # and 503(c) information.   

I think the biggest reason for our success is because of the organization commitment.  We seem to really get the word out in our community and many would-be sponsors come to use (at the local level).   The rest of the effort comes from having a couple people focus on coordinating sponsors like what Cory and I have done in past Boise Code Camps.

Give me a day or so and I will send you a copy of our yearly expense sheet so you can see what our sponsors are paying for year to year.    

Thanks

  Scott