Is there too much focus on starting new teams, and not enough on maintianing the old?

[Ashley Christine]

Alrite, This is something that was sort of brought to my attention in a conversation with someone. I dont have all the stats on teams who stay in FIRST and teams who have left FIRST, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

One of the main focuses of FIRST is starting new teams. Which is a super duper important deal. The rookie teams who are led in the right way catch the spirit right away... and if not then often in a second season they are hooked.
But what happens when everything gets old and becomes repetition?

How many teams were origionally in FIRST and how many of them have stayed? I know FIRST is growing, but are the teams with the experience and knowledge still around to help out the new guys?

It is VERY important to start new teams... but I think a new part of the "homework" should be maintaining old teams. And keeping the fun and spirit and excitement alive.

Yes, there are old teams that have been here forever and are still very into it. Which is awesome, but what about the teams who come love this program and fall out of it and issues come up? Shouldnt we be trying to motivate them to stay in FIRST?

I could be totally wrong on a lot of this, but this is what I have seen and how I view some of the things I have noticed in my first year.

What are your thoughts?

[Amanda Morrison]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30675
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20525
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31067
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22550

I used keywords 'maintaining teams' and 'new team growth'. You can probably also find past discussions in threads about yearly registration, sponsorship loss, fundraising, and mentoring new teams. I did not include those results, but thought these might be helpful.

[Wayne C.]

One of the main focuses of FIRST is starting new teams. Which is a super duper important deal.

But what happens when everything gets old and becomes repetition?

How many teams were origionally in FIRST and how many of them have stayed? I know FIRST is growing, but are the teams with the experience and knowledge still around to help out the new guys?


FIRST?


?

The experience in the NJ region is that we have about a 95% retention rate and we add 6+ new teams per year to the region.

A lot of what keeps the teams going is the off season competitions we have nearly monthly in this part of the country. The FIRST Nationals are just the signal that the off season is about to begin.

And the NJ teams mentor the new rookies to make sure they never are alone.

I see that the largest factor involved in keeping teams is their attitude. If they have fun in FIRST and make friends in the area they want to come back. And a determined team can accomplish miracles.

WC :cool:

[Cory]

Bill Gold had a great post on here awhile ago about exactly the same thing, but in California specifically.

Basically, he came to the conclusion that we're trying too hard to start new teams, without making sure that we can sustain the old ones first. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I'd much rather see a team stick around for 5+ years, than see 5 new teams created that last 1-2 years each.

[slickguy2007]

Bill Gold had a great post on here awhile ago about exactly the same thing, but in California specifically.

Basically, he came to the conclusion that we're trying too hard to start new teams, without making sure that we can sustain the old ones first. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I'd much rather see a team stick around for 5+ years, than see 5 new teams created that last 1-2 years each.


Well said, I could not agree with you more. Being a 3rd year team, we are still struggling to survive. It is not easy to establish yourself in the community and the school, but its not something I plan on giving up on now or ever. Gotta keep on trying!

GO 1403!!!

[TimCraig]

Bill Gold had a great post on here awhile ago about exactly the same thing, but in California specifically.

As the mentor of a fellow bay area team, 1120 in Milpitas, I agree. We've been in FIRST for 3 seasons and our budgets have never been spectacular. Probably topping out at a maximum of less than $15,000 in the bank. We had one parent who was good at fund raising but he was there only for the first two years and apparently poisoned some wells before he left. Last year, the NASA grant to go to Las Vegas made it a real difference to our funding to the point we didn't compete at Silicon Valley because the $6000 was too good to pass up.

It would be nice to land a major sponsor who would come in and fund $5k-10k a year to guarantee entering one regional and building a robot.

As an aside, I remember going to Nationals in 2003 and hearing one team complain that they had only one sponsor. But it was Chrysler and they kicked in $50k. (Enco here I come :D )

[Denman]

its going well over here.... 759 are carrying on (however not as great a number of students recruited this year )
and last year the number of teams increased 100% and probably again this year or even 200% ....
i havn't been in touch recently with the london guys so i can't comment on their progress.
However I am tempted to start one here next year (its a bit late already for this year imo)

[Koko Ed]

Well it's easier helping to get a team on their feet and start the process but interferring after the process has begun can feel like meddling and can cause discomfort on both side. So it's an awkward process.

[KathieK]

I could be totally wrong on a lot of this, but this is what I have seen and how I view some of the things I have noticed in my first year.
Ashley, this is very perceptive of you to recognize after having just completed your rookie season! This is something that everyone in FIRST recognizes as an issue. There are many, many people reaching out to veterans who are falling off the radar screen, while also trying to mentor rookie teams. I think I can say that if someone hears about a team that may be struggling (regardless of its age), either point them in the direction of your area's FIRST Senior Mentors or Regional Directors or state/regional FIRST organizations or NEMO, or let someone from one of those categories know about the team so a contact can be made.

[Jessica Boucher]

So, say you're a team, and you have one month to fundraise. You can convince a company that could give you $10,000, or you could convince multiple smaller companies to give you a thousand here, a thousand there...which company do you target?

The one that will give you $10,000, of course. You've got tons of other stuff to do before Kickoff, the best short term answer is to go for the big fish.

Alternatively, from FIRST's shoes....say you have a town, and you can convince them to start only one team in 2006 before December: a FRC team, a FLL team, or a VEX team. Which makes most sense?

Financially, the big fish, starting a FRC team, wins out every single time.

***

Every team, no matter who they are, or where they are, is financially worth at least $6000 to FIRST, whether directly or indirectly. It is the major source of revenue, and compared to FLL and VEX, it makes more financial sense to start a new FRC team, since it will take multiple FLL or VEX teams to make up for the revenue that one FRC team pulls into the organization. (Plus, multiple FLL or VEX teams can take more time to create than just one FRC team.)

Because this is an easy form of revenue (not to mention being able to claim growth looks wonderful, page 4 of the annual report can tell you that), and to add that every added team creates just that more financial independence from the national sponsors.....creating new teams looks like a great place to focus the already limited volunteer resources on, right?

However....that does not mean that I agree that the focus should always be on growth.

Last year, when I created a visual representation of the New England FRC teams, current and dormant (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?s=&galleryid=165&perrow=4&trows=10&quiet=Verbose&direction=DESC&sort=date), it shows that there are a lot of teams that are dormant. When I investigated into the reasonings as to why these teams could not always be resurrected, the reasons were varied...and all valid.
In this research, I have found there is what I call a "fallout period" - a time in which an area is harder to be convinced to resurrect a team because they still remember what happened with the last one and have non-positive perceptions of the program. The fallout period ends in various ways - administration/teachers retiring or moving to other school systems, students graduating, etc. Thus, it is important to keep an eye on the inner workings of towns to see when the period is over.

Because of this, it is crucial to make sure that teams do not go dormant and enter this period, especially because growth will eventually come to a point where an area has no new school systems to reach.

But...today there are still new school systems out there. Since the situation favors creating new rookie teams, that's where the human resources (in this instance, time) are going to be focused. It is up to us as the FIRST Community to pick up the slack and take care of each other. We are our best resource in the fight against dormancy.

How do we fight? Finding best practices. Reading and writing white papers. Talking on CD, at competitions, anywhere. This problem is very real and we are our own best defence.
-JAB

[Matt Leese]

FIRST was particularly guilty of trying to rapidly start lots of new teams a few years ago with the NASA grants and the KPCB grants. These managed to start some teams that were barely hanging on financially and ended up with little or no technical support. I think things have improved since then, however (not that they're perfect).

The real key is to create teams that can be self-sufficient. Teams that have enough strength that they don't rely on outside help simply to make it through the season. This is something we've tried to work on in Rochester and we'll see in the coming if we've succeeded. One of the key factors is to not have team growth be larger than the community mentoring base can handle.

While I believe we should keep teams in FIRST, I think that there are times when a team needs to die. Sometimes there's too much baggage with a team currently (from teachers to mentors to students) that makes it impossible for it to really succeed. In that case, it may be better for the team simply stop competing for a few years so that the factors that were preventing them from participating successfully no longer exist.

Matt

[Shu Song]

I've never thought about creating new teams as a source of a revenue for FIRST, but you're definitely correct. It is vital to FIRST's survival to create new teams and I think that's why the push for new teams have been the main focus and that keep old one's alive isn't. From a business standpoint, if two new teams get created while an old one is forced to retire, you've made a profit. But seeing as FIRST is a non-profit organization, there's no reason to continually push for new teams. I'd definitely like to see FIRST address this point here.

[Ashley Christine]

Thanks for all of your replies so far, its nice to see everyones points of view. And you all have really good back up for your points. So yeah, nice job you guys. And I still would like to hear more thoughts cuz its an interesting topic. :)

[MChapman]

I agree we really should work on keeping the older teams around with all the expierence. Yes it may be hard to keep in touch with the community and schools an fundraising you always have other teams to back you up in your support. I'd also rather see a team with expierence stay around for as many years as they can, rather then rookies who can only be here 1-2 years an let go of FIRST. More should be put into keeping the older teams.. :D

[KORN_lover_2007]

I think it's great to start new teams too, and I never thought about teams quitting because of disappointments or boredom. Our team isn't incredibly old, but I could never see us quitting. Yes, we have financial problems too, but our community has been incredibly supportive and has helped out a lot, especially for being a small town, and we have always found we could scrape up the money to go to a regional and championship. We have always found it great to start new teams, because we are incredibly enthusiastic about FIRST and it tends to spread. I could never think of a team going to a competition, then not being excited about FIRST. After my first competition, I was absolutely addicted, lol. Our team is a role model for the over 20 new teams in Kansas this year and I think it just feels really good to be spreading FIRST, and I hope that old teams remember this feeling and don't die out, even if I find that really strange and hard to believe.

[TimCraig]

FIRST was particularly guilty of trying to rapidly start lots of new teams a few years ago with the NASA grants and the KPCB grants. These managed to start some teams that were barely hanging on financially and ended up with little or no technical support.

The team I mentor was part of that flurry of team creations. We've managed to develop a strong program in every area EXCEPT fund raising. It would be helpful if FIRST provided more support in this area.

As an aside, it's interesting to read what support the mentor team thinks they supplied to us versus the support we think we actually received.

[sweet-chan]

New teams that get help are really lucky. Even when we were a new team, we didn't have much help. We're still struggling as a 4th year team.
There was a team that helped us out a bit when we were rookies. But after that, pretty much no help from adults or other teams. We've always been running on a budget of about $7000-8000 each year. After paying competition fee, we don't have much to work with, usually about $1500 for building our robot. We have no power tools other than power drills. Students design and build the entire robot, but we pay a machine shop to weld when we have to. I don't think the judges believed us when we said the students did everything except welding and only had hacksaws for cutting metal and no drill press. :p
We applied for the NASA grant both 1st and 2nd years, but never got it. :(
There really isn't much support from our school and community. Still never had any corporate sponsors before.
We're still pretty optimistic though. We count ourselves lucky that we are able to go to 1 regional a year.
Anyone know if FIRST is offering the $1000 assistance grants for teams attending only 1 regional that they offered last year? Doesn't seem like they are offering them this year.

[asher]

The older teams also get stuck with having to mentor the new teams, after 2 teams we started told other teams we didn’t do enough for them, didn’t support them, ect. We were just done with it. The new teams we started because "that was the right thing to do" ended up tearing our team apart, I kept up with them my first 2 years in college but it just wasn’t worth it anymore, what we had was gone.

You would think team 31 would have their act together, but after the new teams we started it’s been continually downhill. It makes me sad really…

[KORN_lover_2007]

There really isn't much support from our school and community. Still never had any corporate sponsors before.
We're still pretty optimistic though. We count ourselves lucky that we are able to go to 1 regional a year.


That is very sad that there isn't much support from your school or community. :ahh: I suggest doing a lot of fundraising that involves people from your community, like having a booth at a fair, being in a parade, or selling things at football games. Our team has had wonderful success selling things that glow at football games. Put simply, just go out at community things and advertise your team, talk to whoever you can and tell them to tell others, use business cards, all that good stuff. This all goes out to rookie teams too. Hopefully all these new teams and all the old teams can get a lot of school and community support, because I think that is very important for them to stay alive. But it's good that you guys are optimistic, that will help you a lot. :)

[Jack Jones]

On the one hand, FIRST is doing an excellent job at recruiting new teams. The NASA grants into the NASA events works to entice prospective schools into joining the program. Local volunteers, such as Gail Alpert team #469, work tirelessly digging up sponsors. Veteran teams help the rookies cope with the arduous task of building a team and putting a robot on the floor. ChiefDelphi is there to answer their newbe concerns.

On the other hand, FIRST isn’t doing as well in keeping the teams it worked so hard to start in the first place. The system in place that of seeding the field and expecting it to flourish thereafter may have reached the point of diminishing return. Last year at this time there were 888 teams (source). (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22550) This year there are 873. Of the 873 registered teams this year 113 are rookies. We can project that over 128 more teams will no longer be with us in 2006. The rate of growth shrank from 38.1 percent in 2001 to just 8.6 percent in 2005. The projected growth for this year is –1.5 percent, not growth at all, but decline.

So what is the reason we have over 1800 team numbers but less than 1000 teams? No offense kids, but it’s not because of team politics. There’s a new bunch of kids every year, and any slackers are gone for sure within four. True there are cases where the teacher’s union or the administration won’t buy in – or a dedicated teacher is nowhere to be found - but those situations are rare. The reason boils down to economics. When a mentor is given a jumpstart from NASA and/or found money, then has it vanish, he/she either goes out and finds an amount that’s almost as much as his salary, or he says; “Oh well. I was great while it lasted.”

The fact of the matter is that it is not FIRST’s fault. It is a national problem. In the last 25 years the U. S. has slipped from third to fourteenth place in the proportion of young adults holding degrees in engineering and science. The number of baccalaureate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math fell by 18.6 percent in the last 15. Meanwhile, Congress thru NASA kicks in a few million dollars toward FIRST. Meanwhile, Congress kicks in $223million, as a start, to build the Bridge to Nowhere (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/09/bridges/).

Apparently our government believes that Inspiration can/should be achieved by a Faith Based Initiative. That is, the parishioners of FIRST (corporations) will find it in their own best interest to take up the cause. As long as the congregation exists, then Inspiration will flourish. What they ignore is the fact a portfolio that starts out weak, then attempts to grow by keying to the Dow, is doomed to go basically nowhere – just like that bridge.

http://www.grovesrobotics.org/djavfirst.jpg

[FIRST JerseyKid]

The way my team maintains members and progress is by always having goals and projects to work on. If you find that everything is becoming old try something new. My team is learning so many new things. We have started to teach more members Inventor and 3ds Max. We have the programmers working on new sensors and writing a simulator. Our Spirit committee is working on revamping the image of our team.

There are so many things you can learn and try out that I don't understand how teams can become bored.

[sciencenerd]

We've managed to develop a strong program in every area EXCEPT fund raising. It would be helpful if FIRST provided more support in this area.


I can definitely relate to this. Team 1318 is lucky to have a couple of great mentors who know how to fund-raise, but even with their help explaining sometimes the hoops you have to jump through to get money from a company can be bewildering to the uninitiated like me! I pick up the technical side in a jiffy, but the letter-writing and all that takes some more time.

It would be awfully nice of FIRST to provide materials to teams to help with sponsor gaining, such as form letters or even examples for us to base it off of. Our team wouldn't need it personally because of the awesome aforementioned mentors, but I'm sure there are plenty of teams struggling financially who would appreciate the help. I am sure this would increase team retention rates, because there are some teams who fall out simply because they don't know how to raise money and don't know who to ask for help. This may not be directly related to FIRST's mission, but it would enable people to continue in the programs that are, which is necessary for this program to be a success.