How employers get involved
Young Engineers has an ambitious development plan that seeks to ensure that there is the capacity to support a club in every secondary school in the country as well as providing stimulating and innovative engineering development activities, competitions, challenges and the Young Engineer for Britain event. Like all charities, Young Engineers relies on the generous investment of its sponsors and donors and is always seeking new avenues of income to increase its reach to young people and support club development and expansion.
Current sponsors and donors enjoy significant publicity across the year and have seen other benefits including the ability to influence engineering education, increased public profile, better recruitment and increased staff fulfilment. Our current sponsors believe that their relationship with Young Engineers provides outstanding value for money!
There are a number of ways in which potential sponsors might help achieve the above aims:
- Provide financial sponsorship or donations
- Provide non financial resources
- Offer to sponsor a regional event
- Release staff to support Young Engineer Clubs
- Spread the word about Young Engineers
If you are interested in supporting Young Engineers through any of the routes above or have other ideas on how you might be able to help them, please contact Stuart Ellins (01428 727995) to discuss the possibilities further.
Details of types of support:
Provide financial sponsorship or donations
There are, currently, two main levels of Young Engineers sponsorship: national level and supporter level. There are four National Sponsors who contribute towards core funding and have the opportunity to host their own challenges. There are also about 20 Supporting Sponsors who provide financial assistance to Young Engineers and are involved in the Annual Celebration of Engineering. In addition, sponsorship is received for regional events and in the form of ‘loan’ staff.
National Sponsors receive substantial publicity from their association with Young Engineers and benefit from having their own unique component of the Young Engineer’s programme.
Supporting Sponsors also provide funds to assist with the core activities of Young Engineers and benefit significantly from the publicity that accompanies such investment.
Young Engineers is keen to hear from potential sponsors and donors interested in national or supporter level sponsorship, as well as companies wishing to form an alliance with others from similar disciplines (civil engineering for example) in order to host a discipline-specific challenge, or those who simply identify with their cause and would like to be associated them.
Please contact Stuart Ellins (01428 727995) for further details.
Provide non financial resources
Young Engineers is always seeking new sponsors/providers of materials and resources, whether this is in the provision of printing facilities; supply of raw materials to schools; or in the direct support of the core staff in areas such as assistance with web authorship and hosting; the provision of IT or the loan of vehicles. Such donations enable a greater proportion of available financial sponsorship to be focussed directly on their core activities and thereby reduce overheads.
Please contact Stuart Ellins (01428 727995) for further details.
Offer to sponsor a regional event
Each year, Young Engineers organise 11 regional finals to house both the K’Nex Challenge and the Young Engineer for Britain competitions. They are constantly looking for new venues and local sponsors for these events, as well as new sources of judges and prizes. For details about how to support these regional events, please contact Joanne Phillips (01428 727825).
Release staff to support Young Engineer Clubs
The most successful individual Young Engineers clubs have links to local engineering companies. As well as often supplying modest, but crucial financial support to individual clubs, these companies often from relationships with the clubs. Link engineers, attending club sessions regularly, or when required for trouble-shooting, are an important link for clubs to the engineering community and allow them to form relationships with actual engineers and learn about what they do. Club visits to company premises also increase students’ awareness of the profession. Companies can become involved directly with clubs in their area, or sign up to the SETPOINT Science and Engineering Ambassador scheme. Further details can be obtained from Lil Grafton (01428 727294).
Spread the word about Young Engineers
For those companies or individuals, who feel unable to support Young Engineers in any of the above ways, there remains the opportunity to help with expansion. Simply spreading the word about the value of Young Engineers will bring its own dividends.
Text from Young Engineers website