Team Budget Research

[ClemsonFSAE]

Hello Fellow FSAE Teams,

I'm trying to collect some research on team budgets to present to my school. We have always believed that we are a very low budget team, especially relative to how we finish, but we don't really have any proof. For your reference, we were able to double our budget to approximately $34k this year due to an added business team, and we placed 20th at FSAE Michigan.

If you could post your school and a rough team budget (I know that information can be a little confidential... round to the nearest $1000?) for 2012. I'd greatly appreciate the assistance.

[ClemsonFSAE]

Hello Fellow FSAE Teams,

I'm trying to collect some research on team budgets to present to my school. We have always believed that we are a very low budget team, especially relative to how we finish, but we don't really have any proof. For your reference, we were able to double our budget to approximately $34k this year due to an added business team, and we placed 20th at FSAE Michigan.

If you could post your school and a rough team budget (I know that information can be a little confidential... round to the nearest $1000?) for 2012. I'd greatly appreciate the assistance.

[JulianH]

I guess it's really difficult to compare cash budgets. It all depends on how much you have to buy etc.


On car parts, we pay for carbon fiber and surely some buy parts (tires, brake pads, cells...) but basically all milling/lathing parts are from sponsors.

I don't know the exact cash-budget for our team but I guess a lot of european teams are hitting triple digits easily.

[Jon Burford]

in your dollars our team is less than 28K, I cannot be more specific,
We do get a lot of machine time in house for free though.
We have a class 1(200) win, 2 fuel economy wins and a 2009 FSUK endurance win to our teams name,
We are attempting an ambitious build this year on the same budget. we get approx $1000 of financial sponsorship outside and some price reductions and generous donations of parts.

[M. Nader]

funny, our team was just making some budget talk.

I don't really think our case is very similar to a lot as we pay for the materials and manufacturing to external companies and just to ship the car to and from an event would cost us around $10000 or a bit more.

Customs are very high for all components to buy; we pay nearly 30% of cost of every part we buy to the local customs just to allow us to receive it, Shipping here to Egypt is also mighty expensive ranging from $150-$400 depending on size and weight of parts.

In total, counting multiple spare parts, tires and a lot of things that may not go on the car to test and other costs our budget this year was $64,000 but i won't be surprised that if we take of the shipping, customs and spares this number could reach $30,000. Mind you we were saving money in a lot of places. And of course this doesn't include any budget from the managerial (marketing & PR) teams.

[kcapitano]

I'm curious to know what people mean when they say "budget"? Are people referring to how much money the team actually spends, or the market value of their car? I assume for most of these cars a significant portion of the car's market value (dollar value of all parts and labour) is either sponsored or done by the students. It would be very interesting to see what percentage of the car's market value is sponsored for different teams, but I assume that's a pretty difficult number to attain and something not many teams would be willing to share. For my team, I'm not sure how much our sponsorships / freebies are worth, in terms of actual cash flow though, we spend close to $15k each year.

[ClemsonFSAE]

Yea, it's very hard to compare straight budgets. I guess I'm looking more for information about how you get the whole year paid for (including travel to the competition). An overall picture. There is no direct comparison of anyone's budgets, but being getting an idea of how other teams get the job done is equally important.

Thanks!

[flavorPacket]

This is a few years old, but I had a budget of $86k cash (i.e. not including in-kind donations) in 2008-2009. We went to MIS and FSG, and the team covered the flights, cars, and part of the hotels in Germany for 18 people. I ended the year about $4k in debt.

As I understood it, we had a large budget for a US team and an average budget for a European team. I'd love to know if that's accurate.

[RacingManiac]

I believe U of Toronto used to have a pretty good size cash budget for a Canadian school. IIRC it was around $70k CDN back in 2006-2007 era, not counting donation in machine time, material and the like. Though I believe a good chunk of that was used to travel to UK Formula Student. We do not however, cover for flight for student, they do cover board and car rental for the competition for about 10-12 people.

These days I am not sure what they are running with...

[Some Guy]

Actual cash is about ~15k, then add in support that the school government gives us (about 18-24k in parts, materials, tools). It's worth noting that we spend 5-8k per year equipping our shop. This means things like tool kits (didn't have those 2 years ago), Welders (new tig last year) and an engine dyno this year (about 5k there).

So overall about 35-40k, but then take out around 5-10k to equip the shop each year. We do have members pay a fee to go to competitions (fuel, lodging, etc). We are going to 3 this year, all in north America. Last year we ran about 3/4 that. We usually shoot for a small surplus when all is said and done.

Our team is only on it's second driving car. The school is also making some funding changes for coming year, so we might not be able to pull as much out of them. Our shop is finally pretty well established so we will be able to devote more of our budget to the car now.

[ClemsonFSAE]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by flavorPacket:
...I had a budget of $86k cash (i.e. not including in-kind donations) in 2008-2009... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That does seem to be bigger than most US budgets, but not much bigger than I expect for some teams. In the $34k I quoted earlier, that included the van rentals, truck and van fuel, hotels, and a lot of the team food at the competition. Much of that was brought in by the team members. In all it would probably cost us about $9000 *including registration* just to compete in Michigan.

[Some Guy]

I'm kind of surprised that a school like Clemson doesn't have a larger budget given its automotive engineering credentials. Uconn school of engineering as a whole has only just started to really accept what we do. We have always had support from a few select staff members but now it is truly starting to gain wide acceptance. The figure I gave doesn't include member fees, I don't want to give a specific number for that though.

[safetyfactorof1]

20k - 25k in cash through member dues,engineering student council and sponsors. Lots of things were secured through donations such as tooling, down to little things like radiator hoses, wire, and engine sensors. Few materials were donated, however machine time for uprights and diff carriers as well as water jet services time were.

Also, our diff is "on permanent loan" by our 2011-2012 president, and the S.O.E. picks up our entry fee.

FWIW, we took a top 20 finish in MIS.

[ClemsonFSAE]

I'd love to have to use less cash for sure. We've got a lot more help from machining partners this year, but we're lacking in other value-in-kind donations. Team transitions in the past have left us out of luck with previous sponsors. Congrats on the top 20 finish, safetyfactorof1!

[Cardriverx]

We are t 40k at the most for a whole year. I always assumed we were low mid range com paired to everyone else.

[safetyfactorof1]

Thank you! After an unfortunate incident last year, we were determined not to have a repeat of MIS11.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

[BeunMan]

I won't go into budget details but have some remarks with simply measuring budget with $$$:

- The budget is usually (for smaller teams) dictated by parts and parts can be arranged by in kind sponsoring thus lowering the in cache budget needed.
- Going overseas is an order of magnitude more expensive and increases mostly exponential to a certain ceiling with the number of team members. (e.g. it is expensive really quickly and then only marginally increases with additional members).
- The size of the team matters if you arrange activities alongside/besides the FS(AE) competitions. E.g. Some teams do team building activities (or weekends), arrange for carting events without charge etc. This is not part of the actual car but costs a lot of money. The overhead costs of bigger teams are going to dictate your budget eventually as keeping it "one team" is as important as actually building the car.
- If you have no machine-shop you might have to pay for this, while having a machine shop cost maintenance.

- The learning aspect for team members cannot be expressed in terms of money. Investing in this is always a good idea.


On a team note:
The cost aspect is one of the reasons the DUT Racing team does not go to the US competitions (Except for the DUT07e85). It's simply too expensive to take a car and say 15-20 team members, even when they pay it for themselves (flight, stay, etc. Also, who's going to go?). If the team would be smaller (say 30 max. instead of 60+) than I think it would be possible with the same budget.

[ClemsonFSAE]

Hi Tristan,

You are very right about the various expenses. It sure would be nice to be able to pay for team building things like carting, and it would be really cool to get more things as value-in-kind donations. 60 team members would be crazy! We had our largest team at FSAE Michigan this year, 17 members came with us to the competition. I can't even imagine the logistics of going international, but it would be such a great experience!

[mattd27]

In 2010 Team Swinburne had a budget of around $26K in cash. $12.5K from sponsors and $13.5K from the uni. Initially the uni only gave us $7.5K but after we presented a business case stating the value of the team to the uni through all our marketing efforts they chipped in an extra $6K.
We did however have all our machining done for free buy the uni machine shop or by our sponsors, also all our aluminium billet was donated through sponsorship.
From what I can remember the major costs we faced were:
Comp - $4k
Tyres - $2.5K
Chrome Moly for frame - $1.5K
Launch Night - $1K
Carbon (body, sidepods, undertray) - $2K
Comp expenses (accom/food/uniforms etc) - $4K
I have no idea how much we spent on all the little items as we were bad a keeping track of it all and the uni would not share our acc status with us. Im pretty sure it would be close to $8k. Also because of the difficulty of getting money out of the uni acc and the fact that the finance department shuts 3 weeks before comp we created an emergency fund of $2k for unexpected costs, ie shit breaking, final touches and things we forgot etc. I wont give details on that one..

We had a small team of 8 and i think anymore would have been detrimental. It forced us to keep things simple and really understand what we were putting on the car.



Unrelated to that budget the team also travelled to Japan for the 2011 comp. This cost each team member $400 (12 people) and was all costs included.
Overall the trip cost $34K all up.
Shipping (air to Japan sea home to Australia) - $9.5K inc carnet taxes
Accom & Meals - $5.6K
Flights - $12K
Car rental + Fuel & Tolls - $2K
Vehicle improvements, new tyres, misc costs etc - 5K
Entry fee - $.9K

Of this the uni covered the entry fee $900 and we were left to come up with the rest. We managed to get a student exchange travel allowance from the government for everyone totalling $24K and the rest was raised by students ($400 as mentioned before) and through selling team equipment, including the actual car itself.

Hope that helps teams understand how much you do/don’t need to build and compete an SAE car.

[ed_pratt]

Just to chip in here...

This year we have basically built the entire car from scratch with very few carry over components -
4 quarter midget dampers + 1 steering rack.

We have spent something like £11.5K all in, including all competition costs.
We managed to get the bulk of our machining from sponsorship/university workshop, but still had to ship some out.

Just an aside to anyone who is wondering how teams manage to achieve a large amount of sponsorship...
There are a huge number of companies around who are very willing to help us out IF you get your designs to them with plenty of time.
Come knocking on the door with only a short lead time and most will simply be unable to help as their paying customers will almost always take preference.

[Rex Chan]

Melbourne has had a budget of $20k AUD cash from the uni for a long time. Last few years, they've bought stuff worth $5k (MoTeC). Not much cash sponsorship, as far as I can tell. We get uni workshop time (the techies Oktay/Shane make stuff for us) worth $20k (I think it means we can use up 20k worth of workshop resources), and lots of outside in-kind sponsorship.

I think we're about average for an Australian team. I think we're pretty happy, but it would be nice if the cash kept pace with inflation...