Team fee survey

[turbo1s1k]

We are a second year team and last year we did not want to charge a team fee or dues to be on the team. We did not want to discourage any student from joing the team.

This year we are going to charge a fee to help defray some costs. What do other teams charge?

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[Taylor]

My current team is $250 per student.
My previous team is $250 for rookies, $500 for veterans.

These are all meant to be sponsorship monies raised, not checks from mom & dad. They're also both minimums - we regularly had students individually raise $1k+.

For students with hardships, we always made accommodations.

[Peyton Yeung]

We are a second year team and last year we did not want to charge a team fee or dues to be on the team. We did not want to discourage any student from joing the team.

This year we are going to charge a fee to help defray some costs. What do other teams charge?

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In previous years we have had students raise $300 via fundraising and donations. This year we are asking students to bring in $200 dollars. We have had multiple fundraising activities throughout the year for students to raise funds and many raise the rest of their funds via donations from local businesses.

[Allison K]

We are a second year team and last year we did not want to charge a team fee or dues to be on the team. We did not want to discourage any student from joing the team.

This year we are going to charge a fee to help defray some costs. What do other teams charge?

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No fee to join, they pay with their time and dedication. Though not the reason for this policy, a convenient side effect is that nobody feels entitled to being a team member/traveling/etc. because they paid their dues.

They pay a $50 activity fee to the school, however it's one fee for as many activities as they want to do and doesn't get back to us directly. I think the activity fee goes to cover facilities expenses, and we have a dedicated shop in the school so I have no complaints about that policy.

Students are responsible for their own travel fees, however they have the opportunity to work as day camp counselors in the summer to offset costs. Subsidies are provided to those that need it, and we are fortunate that each of the past few years a couple families have volunteered to cover their own child as well as donate to cover another that needs it. The rest of the travel deficit comes from the general team fund or from a non-profit associated with the district that helps support student involvement expenses. By worlds last year about half the team was subsidized some amount, but that was three travel events in the span of seven weeks. We publish projected travel budgets at the start of the school year so families are forewarned six or more months ahead of event related expenses.

Edited to add: Travel is charged at cost for hotel, food, and transportation. If we spend less for whatever reason (food gets donated, hotels get unexpectedly discounted) the extra gets rolled over into the next event and divided among the kids. Generally the entire team travels together, though we have had one or two students stay behind for academic or familial obligations.

[Rho+]

No fee to join, they pay with their time and dedication. Though not the reason for this policy, a convenient side effect is that nobody feels entitled to being a team member/traveling/etc. because they paid their dues.

They pay a $50 activity fee to the school, however it's one fee for as many activities as they want to do and doesn't get back to us directly. I think the activity fee goes to cover facilities expenses, and we have a dedicated shop in the school so I have no complaints about that policy.

Students are responsible for their own travel fees, however they have the opportunity to work as day camp counselors in the summer to offset costs. Subsidies are provided to those that need it, and we are fortunate that each of the past few years a couple families have volunteered to cover their own child as well as donate to cover another that needs it. The rest of the travel deficit comes from the general team fund or from a non-profit associated with the district that helps support student involvement expenses. By worlds last year about half the team was subsidized some amount, but that was three travel events in the span of seven weeks. We publish projected travel budgets at the start of the school year so families are forewarned six or more months ahead of event related expenses.

My team hasn't had membership fees in the three years I have been on the team, and the only monetary demands are made if and when we are invited to worlds. Our business team has always been able to cover the costs for a season (Robot + Travel) by reaching out to sponsors. This will be the first year that we are registering and competing at two separate regional competitions, so our financial security might change. But, as per the norm, we don't charge our members a cent.

[sanddrag]

Being associated with a California public school, we have never and will never charge a fee to participate, and legally, we can't. Approximately 60% of the students in our school live at or below the poverty line, and we are not a "pay to play" team. Quite honestly, the students who cannot afford high participation fees are the ones who need a program like this most.

Even the first T-shirt we cover. Traveling trips are optional and are charged at actual cost, which typically ends up being about $400 per student per trip. We are asking each student to make a conscious effort to sell $50 worth of product in our fund raiser, which is not a lot to ask. Sales in excess of $50 of product will count toward offsetting their individual trip costs at rate of 50% of gross revenue.

I will be pointing my students to this thread, to show them how teams in other parts of the country do it.

[NShep98]

To contribute toward rent for our space and register under the 4H program costs each member about $150 a year, usually paid right before/during build season.

[Brian Maher]

Team 2791 charges dues of $200/year, with a discount to $100 if a student is on free or reduced-price lunch. Our lead mentor always emphasizes that being unable to afford the dues should never stop someone from being on the team and to talk to him if that is a concern.

Team 1257 does not charge membership dues; our district does not allow clubs to charge membership fees.

[Chief Hedgehog]

FRC 4607 charges $150 for the season with a $100 volunteer check (in case parents do not do any volunteering for us).

[itsjustmrb]

Team 4063 does not charge any kind of fee. Travel, meals, lodging and uniforms are all provided.

[Connor McBride]

I believe its $25 for chop shop.

[turbo1s1k]

So, it sounds like if teams are able to cover all of the cost they do. That is what we did last year. This year I don't think we are able to cover all of the travel expenses like last year. So, it sounds like that teams that do charge a fee are basically trying to cover the cost of their teams travel expenses.

When travel costs are the 2nd highest expense for our team we have to do something to help offset that. Ideally I would love to have a sponsor cover it all but at this point we don't have that in place.

[Monochron]

So, it sounds like if teams are able to cover all of the cost they do. That is what we did last year.

I don't think that is the case at all.

Everyone above seems to either charge some form of money regardless of their bank account size or charge nothing at all out of principle (many because they are not allowed).

We ask for $200 from each student yearly (as a condition for attending competition) and take a lot of steps to make sure they can raise that money through fundraisers or sponsorships. We also assign each student a local business and encourage them to approach other businesses as well. We run "presentation training" yearly to give everyone practice at giving a small pitch for the team.

As others have said, if there are financial constraints on families, we always work something out so their student can still participate.

[jaredhk]

Our team works a little differently due to our relationship with the school but essentially students are not charged anything to be on the team. Students pay for the trips they attend (partially subsidized by the school) and team shirts. There is no fee, however, just for being on the team.

We function similar to a sports team at our school where students don't pay to be on the team but pay for their uniform and long distance travel expenses.

Our school is also able to provide need based financial aid in some cases.

[vScourge]

Our student fees this year $280, rookies and veterans. That includes 4-H registration fee (we're also a SPIN club), $60 for food during build season, and $200 for "volunteer fees".

Volunteer fees are designed to encourage parents to help support the team by supervising in the shop or at events, carpool mentors, help with fundraising, etc. We meet 10 months of the year, so that's $20 per month. If a family volunteers 4 hours in a given month, they get the $20 back at the end of the year. If a parent is moderately active with the team, it's easy to earn all $200 back.

Competitions are optional for students, and they must pay us for their share of the lodging+food. Other team funds (grants, fundraised) cover hotel+food for collegiate mentors that travel with us.

[maxnz]

Our team charges no fee, mainly because we are from a public school.

But, now that we are planning to go to a second regional, which has extra costs associated with it, we are going to have students who want to go participate in at least two fundraisers. That then covers part of the cost so the team can pay for the trip.

[marshall]

We require no fees.
We ask that students pay for uniform costs and help cover some costs for travel/hotel for competitions. We heavily subsidize this though.
We will pay for any student who cannot afford it due to hardships.
Average out of pocket costs for students on 900 for the past few years has been like $300 or $400 depending on the trip to Championship.

[Michael Hill]

Our team has no fees to be on our team. Students are responsible for paying for their T-shirts and lodging. Our team operations (insurance, robot build, etc.) is funded through grants and donations. We do, however, rely on students to go out and get grant money/donations, but there isn't a set minimum they must bring in.

[ahartnet]

We are also similar to above. I ask for students to pay for t-shirts, travel and food. This comes out to:

-$10 for our thursday shirt (used every year)
-~$10 for our friday shirt (changes every year)
-~$35 for our Sat shirt (a polo, used every year)

-travel changes, but basically 1/4 of a hotel room * 3 nights + some money towards bus + food. Usually in the neighborhood of $200-250 for away regionals, and $50 for our home regional. I am hoping this year that we can do a car wash fundraiser that will go "in the bank" towards future travel funds for team members.

It's an unspoken rule, but if a team member can't pay, I usually have them do something like a 150 word "essay" about something and then the team covers them. It might be why FIRST is important to them or it may be tailored to them specifically that I'd like to see improve, something like how to stay positive, how to communicate effectively, how to manage time, or whatever.

[GeeTwo]

The first few years, we just charged enough for t-shirts and goggles. The amount has increased over time; we are now asking $150 per student team member, in addition to bona fide fundraising attempts. When we earned a trip to CMP in 2015, we established a fund raising goal for each student through a piggybackr campaign and face to face with local businesses; if they met the goal, they did not have to pay out of pocket. IIRC, most of the students met the goal through fund raising alone. Because the school allowed us to send 2 more people than we had on varsity, we opened up those two slots to the top fund raisers of the JV, who each brought in over $1000 in the blitz.

Edit: Our student fee is still less than band, flag team, cheerleaders, and most (perhaps all) sports teams at Slidell High. The school does not provide us any $$ support apart from a coach's stipend, and in 2015 the school board paid our registration fee to CMP.

[bobbysq]

There is no fee, except for a $30 4H registration that we have no control of and there are some regional expenses that students have to cover. For Worlds, we were able to get those fees 100% sponsored, though.

[PeterK]

Just to put a bit of perspective into this survey.

We (4537) are a community based team (students from 30 different schools) in Adelaide in South Australia. This means no school association.

Our Regionals are in Sydney, close to 1,400km away, not what can be called a short drive away.

We charge $250 per year for students and $100 per year for alumni (former members who graduated and study at uni but still take part in team activities).

Everyone pays their own travel (flights) and accommodation costs.

Without generous sponsorship of a number of companies and institutions we could not exist as annual fees are only a very small part of our expenses.

We also get to build robots in the middle of summer, in steel shed with no air con when air temperatures go over 40 degrees centigrade.

[FlamingSpork]

My team charges a mandatory* $50 donation per student per year which pays for a t-shirt, transport to our closest regional, and lunch at that regional.

We also charge ~$350 per student for travel to our away regional, which includes everything (meals, hotel, bus).

*The mandatory donation might not be mandatory if you can't afford it. As I am only a student, I don't know how it works.

[dirtbikerxz]

We don't charge students anything to be on the team. But we charge about $250 for the in-state regional (covers food, transportation, and 2 nights of hotels), and about 400 for our out of state regional (covers food, transportation, and 3 nights of hotels)

[snoman]

At our school there is no activity fee, no club fee, no cost to students for uniforms, no travel cost (transportation, lodging, meals) and no fundraising requirements. Some team members do spend some of their own money on robotics "stuff".

Most team members do help with fundraising because they get hrs. for it. Their hrs. are tracked by staff and are used to earn a spot on the regional trip, letter and receive a free letter jacket.

If we charged even a modest fee i do not think we would have any students.

We do have 2 FRC teams in our small school and the school gives about 12k in all to support us.

We have one large sponsor 5k and a few small ones.

[PayneTrain]

$50 just so we can pre-pay team apparel and team tags and have some money in the kitty if we need to cover a couple in-season team meals. Travel is heavily subsidized by the team with some fees (we try to keep it under $100 a year for total travel). Moving to the district system has helped us balance these figures out.

The school has a not-for-profit foundation that we can request funds from for need-based students, and mentors can/do pitch in for students when necessary.