Off-Season Event Financing

[Dchandler]

I'm unsure if a similar thread has been started before.

For teams or organizations that have hosted an off-season event before, what were your average expenses such as field rental, food, supplies and etc.? How did you cover expenses and in what ways did you cut costs?

[geomapguy]

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/offseasonfield.htm

[Qbot2640]

We hosted THOR at Reidsville High School last fall. This first off season was rather modest, yet still quite successful. Field rental and transportation was far and away the most significant expense. After that, we bought all the volunteers lunch and a T-shirt. We rented a generator for pit power, but ended up not needing it. We ended up losing something in the neighborhood of $150 on the entire event, and our Regional Director forwarded us the shortfall to cover all expenses.

For the second event (this coming fall) we're looking to scale up the size substantially, thus expenses will be easily covered by registrations (with plenty left to repay last year's gracious loan!)

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I believe getting an official field from AndyMark (or FIRST, I forget) is about $15,000 to the West Coast. That covers shipping, insurance, etc. We split it 50/50 with 2046 this year, since they were hosting Girls' Generation Washington the week before we hosted Girls' Generation Oregon. I don't know for sure about supplies, but if you get the official FIRST field it comes with all the supplies you need (tape, zip-ties, etc.). Food-wise, we just don't worry about it - we don't supply any food, but there are quite a few restaurants close to our school, and we tell people where they are. That's a pretty easy way to save money. To cover our portion of field rental, we charge teams $200 each for Girls' Generation, $200 for Rookie Rumble, or $300 for the combo. That makes up most of the cost, and for the rest we get sponsors to donate.

[Qbot2640]

I believe getting an official field from AndyMark (or FIRST, I forget) is about $15,000 to the West Coast. That covers shipping, insurance, etc.

I can't believe it could be anywhere near that expensive to the West Coast...ours was $2540 including shipping and insurance.

Per the Andymark Website - field is $500 plus $2.00 per mile:

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/offseasonfield.htm

[Libby K]

MidKnight Mayhem came at very little cost to 1923. Our district (Mid-Atlantic) lets off-seasons use the field for free, and we reached out to local business and restaurants about donating food for breakfast and lunch at the event. Breakfast by Dunkin', Lunch by a few pizza places (and one Indian restaurant?!), and snacks purchased by the team at Sam's Club, and sold at the snack bar for a little bit of a profit.

One of our team sponsors helped by renting the pit power generator for us, and team's registration fees went towards paying the school's staff for their time in the building, and purchasing things like volunteer shirts and other event supplies.

Reaching out locally for sponsors helps bring costs down - and drives traffic to your event! Every business that sponsored us allowed us to put up flyers for the event in their stores. The more people from outside of FIRST you're bringing in, the better. Go out and get 'em! :)

[Alan Anderson]

A small event doesn't need a "real" FIRST field. The inaugural CAGE Match (http://www.thecagematch.com/) used what I think was the first low-cost wooden field (http://files.andymark.com/2008-FRC-wooden-field-border.pdf) ever built, provided by the TechnoKats. The full field electronics weren't used; each team brought its own wireless access point, making a table full of daisy-chained routers next to the scoring table.

[Chris Fultz]

This paper doesn't document the actual costs, but it does have a list of everyting to consider when putting together a budget for the event. Many items may not apply to your event, but it will get you thinking of everything to consider.

One big question is are you doing this as a fundraiser, or is your goal just to break even.


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2562

[Dchandler]

One big question is are you doing this as a fundraiser, or is your goal just to break even.

There is a lot of excellent advice in this thread.

Our goal for right now is to break-even but if we can raise extra money that would be great. The money could go back into funding more STEM outreach programs at the university.

And the funny thing is we are actually using your paper right now as a guide for planning the event.

[Mr V]

I can't believe it could be anywhere near that expensive to the West Coast...ours was $2540 including shipping and insurance.

Per the Andymark Website - field is $500 plus $2.00 per mile:

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/offseasonfield.htm

We did not get the field used for the PNW off season events from AndyMark we got it from FIRST. I'd have to check to be certain but I believe that Bear Metal spent about $5000 for the trip from Manchester, NH to the Washington FIRST Robotics Fieldhouse in Kent Wa, aprox 3100mi. We spent another couple hundred renting a truck with a lift gate to get it to and from the event. Shipping to OR from Kent Wa was donated by Platt Electrical supply on their trucks. Carpet other than that which went under the pyramid, consumables and Frisbees were not included. I do not know why we did not get the field from AndyMark, my guess is that it was not available the weekends that we needed it or that it would not have been able to make it from a previous event or to its next event with our dates.

One of the pluses of moving to the district system is that we now have 2 fields in the PNW. So teams in the PNW district will only have to worry about getting the field from Kent Wa to their location and renting a truss assembly since FIRST rented them we will be returning them to FIRST after DCMP so they can return them.

Washington FIRST Robotics is considering making one of our fields available to teams outside of the PNW district for their off-season events. For those events a team will have to secure a FMS and related items directly from FIRST with all that doing so entails. The user will have to provide their own truss (this season) and likely the carpet too.