[rescue] pimping for stuff

[Andrew Howat]

Right, you may know I'm a student, and as part of that, I've got involved
with creating a computing society at my university (University of Newcastle
Upon Tyne - www.ncl.ac.uk)
Part of the thing is that we need to raise money - we're going to use this
to try to pay for the addition of network connections to the student
accomodation, since there isn't any currently. So I've been pimping for
stuff to either: raffle, give away to prospective members (they pay money,
and the student union allocates money to us based on head count as well -
more members, more funds for worthy cause)
So I sent this to various BIG companies - including Sun, SGi, M$ and many
others. Thought you'd either like a laugh at my cheekiness or maybe to
donate stuff?

"Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to you on behalf of the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne's
Computing and LAN Gaming Society. We are a growing society set up by
students from the Computing Science department within the university, who
want to try and open up Computing and Gaming to the general student body and
to improve their experience with computing in the work place. The aim is to
make people in a wide range of degree courses more aware of the
opportunities within the industry, for employment, for improving their own
vocation, to socialise, and to kill off the image of computer users being
"geeks".


We are writing to see if your company is willing to provide any of the
following:

*Promotional goods*
These would be any promotional items that you would hand out at technology
fairs or recruitment events or similar. Examples that we have seen are
things like pens, mouse mats, drinks coasters, bottle openers, clothing
(e.g. caps/t shirts) or novelties. Any amount of any kind of promotional
things would be greatly appreciated. We hope to use these items to give away
at the freshers fair for the next academic year (2002-2003) to try to
recruit members and also entice non-members to become interested.

*Raffle prizes*
As part of the planned events for the freshers fair, we are planning to hold
a raffle open to everyone in order to raise funds for the society and get
new students interested. Any quality items that could be used as prizes
would be most appreciated, and welcomed.

*Competitions awareness*
We would like it if you are able to keep us informed of any competitions you
may choose to run in the future. We hope to increase the awareness of our
members to competitions and encourage participation.

*Donations*
The society will hopefully have office space on campus, and it would be nice
to have a small library of books and software available to members. It would
also be good to have some society owned machines for the use of members, as
opposed to the university owned computers. If you have anything that would
be suitable, we would be grateful if you consider either donating or loaning
it to us. We will give all items a good home and make sure that full use is
made of them.

*Events*
If you are arranging events, such as conferences or public lectures, we
would be very interested to hear about them and try to get our members
involved.

*Careers information*
As part of the planned service for the Computing side of the society, we are
planning to round up careers opportunities and other relevant information to
offer to our members. Therefore if you have any vacancies relevant to
students (i.e. Undergraduate and Graduate with little-to-no experience) then
we would greatly appreciate it if you would let us know of them as they come
up. We also plan to provide a service for our members to encourage them
getting involved with companies to gain experience in the workplace. We
would appreciated it if you let us know about sponsorships, vacation work
and placement opportunities for our members. Finally, We are also looking to
find the many jobs that can be done by students while at university (in the
term time) that relate to computers. If there are any projects that you
think may fall into this category we would be delighted to hear about them
and would love to help. (This is beneficial for both yourselves and the
students because the students will gain experience and your company gains
much cheaper labour.)


What's in it for you:

*Awareness of your brand*
I'm sure you realise that students are a great market for selling computers
and software. Thus you can promote your company by giving us items that we
will pass on, in turn making people more aware of yourselves and your
products and services.

*Great PR*
While donations and interaction directly with a university may bring some
media interest, I'm sure more positive interest would be generated by the
fact that you are getting involved with students directly who will be glad
of this interaction.

*Free promotion*
As a gesture of goodwill, we are willing to handout promotional brochures
and other sales material for your services and products to both members and
non-members of the society throughout the academic year. If you are
interested, we ask that you contact us to arrange logistics.


As you can see we are very ambitious for our society, we hope it will
provide a very useful service to members and help to address problems with
experience in the computing industry (being to get a job you need
experience, but to get experience you need a job...) by encouraging
employers to take students on in whatever capacity. One of our main
ambitions at the moment is to persuade the university that student
accommodation needs to provide broadband Internet access (a lot of flats do
not even have a telephone line!). We have contacted the accommodations
office and are trying to identify plans, or problems with the idea. We are
expecting that they will not want to install networking because of money
considerations, in which case it is our aim to begin to raise funds for the
installation from any source we can. We envisage that money raised by events
in freshers week will help to get the campaign underway, so with this in
mind we hope you can make a donation to help us on our way.


If you have donations to send, please would you send them to the following
address:

Computing and LAN Gaming Society
[address cut out for privacy - if you want to donate stuff, email me off
list]


If you are not the correct person for this request, I apologise and ask that
you please forward this mail to the correct department/person and I would be
most appreciative if you would let me know their address for further
reference.

Thankyou, and I hope that we have continued links with yourselves

Andrew Howat
(On behalf of the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Computing and LAN Gaming
Society)"

anyway, sorry it's so long, hope it entertained or whatever

Andrew