Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Mentors,

My company is having a discussions on ways to encourage and support employee volunteer efforts like FIRST mentoring. I was interested in asking this forum what are some of the ways your companies support you in mentoring FIRST teams?

Do they have an allowance of time off to go to team meetings?
Do they offer incentives to those who volunteer?
Are you assigned to the task as part of your job? If they do, how does that work? Do you get time off? Extra pay?
Does your company help you with travel expenses for regionals or the championship?
Do they off other incentives like a volunteer lunch or dinner or some kind of appreciation celebration?

It will help me to benchmark other companies and I thought it would be valuable to document some of the various ways companies support their volunteers.

If there is a similar thread already, please point me to it, I tried to search but didn't come up with anything.

Right now, my company doesn't do anything, but they are talking about it, which is appreciated.

Any experiences shared would be very helpful.

Thank you,

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

The company I work for graciously lets me spend my vacation time to support FIRST. In other words, no support... but I'm working on changing that

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Boieng team mentors can clock volunteer hours to have extra money donated to the team.(don't know what how if they get paid or not but If they want to support first its an added bonus)


Are you assigned to the task as part of your job? If they do, how does that work? Do you get time off? Extra pay?

one of our main sponsors,, sort of does this. they ask for employees to volunteer and if they are still on schedule with their normal projects they are are allowed as much of their normal work time as they can spare, without falling behind, helping FIRST and still get there normal pay.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My former employer, UTC Power, would give us days off to go to competitions and pay for hotels and planes when we travelled.

My current employeer, different division of the same corporation, doesn't give me anything.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

The owner of the company that I work for is extremely supportive of our robotics program. In addition to corporate sponsorship and machine shop support, I don't have to use my vacation and sick time to go to any competition that we compete at.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I'm in a slightly different situation. My company is the major sponsor for one of the local teams. The mentors get some time off, and the company is picking up the travel and lodging expenses for the whole team.

My kids, however, go to a neighboring school district, so I mentor that team. My company is not interested in sponsoring two teams. I don't get any time off for meetings or events, but my supervisor is flexible about my work schedule so it's easier for me to attend meetings. That has become less of an issues this year because my team has moved its build sessions to evenings. It would be great if I could get time off just for the regional competitions, instead of using my vacation time.

That would not be an incentive to me. I understand that recognition is a positive thing for most people, but I just want to quietly go do what I believe is helpful to my kids and the community. (The money they would have spent on the appreciation dinner could offset some vacation time, and that would make me feel more appreciated. Just sayin'.)

It is good to work at a company that supports FIRST and allows me the flexibility to mentor. I've spoken to many people who would like to be a mentor, but they have so much pressure to work well over 40 hrs, and/or take work home with them, that they can't help in even small ways. I'm blessed to be able to work with my team, and the team's success is very rewarding.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My employer is also the main sponsor of the team. They make a cash donation to the team and they cover my hotel expenses only. Frankly sometimes they treat me as if the sponsorship donation is a personal benefit, so I don't generally get the same rewards/recognition as coworkers who volunteer for one or two day things like science fairs. My solution has been to dissociate my personal support from the team from my employer's support, with limited success. I'm still generally known as "the mentor that [insert company name] provides". YMMV (hopefully).

Edit: Except for 2007, I have used my vacation time to attend regionals.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

The company that I used to work for didn't provide any support to the team besides individual mentors who choose to work with them. The reseason is that larger corporation supported FIRST as a whole and was not willing to support individual teams.

The company I work for now sponsors FIRST as well as many teams local to the different buisness units. They have stated that they are interested in sponsoring a team I work with, but having just started my job two weeks ago, I plan to wait till next season to look into it more.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I'm self employed (when I feel like working)....yeah, I donate time, materials, and tools to the team.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My company has a program that allows employees to request up to 1 hour per week off for volunteer activities. Of course it requires manager approval and is not always allowed, but several employees do use this option to do all variety of school or community volunteering. During the per-season I found it came in really handy getting to one meeting a week by the time the students were getting off school. If we had more than one meeting a week I came latter to the others. During build season it is just a drop in the bucket, but everything helps.

The company also allows you to keep track of volunteer hours and will donate some money at the end of the year to the organization based on employee volunteer hours up to some limit. At one time they were a larger supporter in donations, but times being what they are, we are lucky to get what we do.

Other than that, there are no other official sponsorship such as awards, meals, etc. However, my manager is particularly supportive and was willing to allow the volunteers on our team to take the two days off we need for travel to regionals as a combination of comp time and attendance of a technical conference. This was very generous and not typical.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My last company allowed me to work on FIRST related work during office hours if the workload permitted and would allow me to take time off without pay to attend competitions etc. They also did a great deal of machining and waterjetting for the team. I would say they were a great support to the team and supported me with the project.

My current employer is a much larger company and so it is much harder to get them to contribute resources as there is a great deal of red tape. Supporting a team with resources and shop time is out of the question due to security concerns and regulations so the only way this company could offer support would be monetary or employee time. I am not officially allowed to work on anything related to FIRST during work hours, and this includes posting on chief delphi........ *looks over shoulder and shrinks window even more* But I'm working on that. They put out a call for volunteers on the company intraweb when initially approached by one of the local teams and I have since managed to get their public affairs commitee to donate $500 to two local teams but there is much room for improvement. Given their position within the community and size, I won't be happy until they are offering 10 times that amount to each team.

I have always found that smaller local companies are much more open to helping out with FIRST activities. They are at a disadvantage compared to the larger companies when it comes to finding good skilled employees and are much more likely to offer support knowing that these students will remember their contribution and hopefully will supply them with a skilled workforce later in life. I have never had good luck convincing large corporations to donate funds and find that most teams encounter the same thing unless they have parents in high places.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My experience has run the gamut of support and lack thereof.

My first 8 years in FIRST were with team 308. I worked for the team sponsor, which allowed paid days off for the competitions. However, most direct managers really disliked their employees taking the time off.

My most recent 8 years have been with team 65 then 51. During that time I worked for the sponsor for 8 months. During that 8 months, I was a contract employee without vacation so I had to take unpaid leave to attend events.

The other 7 years and 4 months with 65/51 was complicated. 4 of those years I was piloting airplanes for a living. Due to the whacky schedule associated with that job I was either able to get the days off by bidding my schedule to have the time off or else I just had to miss the competitions.

The remaining 3+ years I've had to use my vacation time to attend competitions. Last year that amounted to me spending 2.5 weeks of vacation on FIRST. That's not going to happen again this year - I need a real vacation.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I work for a large state university. The support I get is 3 days of community service leave per year and enough flexibility in my schedule to allow me to get to most meetings. I usually only have to spend 2 or 3 days of vacation per year to go to a second regional.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My company will do a "matching time grant" where if you donate 40 hours of your time to a non profit they will donate money given enough paperwork. With 4 people mentoring the team from the same company, this adds up to a good bit of money.

Past that, hope your boss lets you flex hours to leave early for build days (and doesn't mind that sleep deprived look for 6 weeks), and you have enough vacation time saved up for regionals. I try and bring back candy and other fun things from regionals and championship as bribes so they keep letting me go. So far I've pulled it off for 3 years without a fight.

We have been able to swing some of the items going to surplus/scrap to be able to go to the team as well.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

The DOT just started an initiative called YES mentoring, it stands for Youth Employee STEM mentoring . DOT employees can get 2 hours a week or up to 104 hours a year of paid leave to mentor youths in STEM fields.

I've gone and gave presentations a couple of times to DOT employees to talk about how they can get involved with FIRST teams.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Mine has varied more by Managers, but usually I have been able to take the Fridays off for competitions without and issue and just work harder during the day to leave an hour earlier than normal. Although my company supports a lot of teams and I have heard of a lot of variation between other mentors on teams. Between only working half days and working on the robot the other half, to anything you want to do is your time and forced to use vacations.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Kudos to companies that are understanding and let employes take time off to support first. My boss is flexible as long as I get my work done, but no benefits. Especially not paying for hotels or travel expenses. Seeing the students work together and having a good time at competitions was something that money can't buy.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My company was kind enough to give me full time off just in time for build season.

Wetzel

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

sigh. Me Too.

Long time ago, they were a lot more supportive - time off, travel expenses, and a donation to the team.

These days, I am grateful they let me work a shifted schedule so I can leave at 4. Even that may go away, I am hearing some grumbling.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I got a small bonus once for performing well at work while also volunteering 700 hours over the course of a year. I've done that for 4 years in a row, but only 1 'bonus'. Interestingly my company gives an award to those who reach 3,500 lifetime volunteer hours, yet last year most of the people who had reached that in recent years were laid off. One year I got 8 hours of paid vacation for my efforts, but that was after the season. We get a breakfast once a year, but we have to stay late to make up the time for the breakfast. Ironic, heh.

So as to support -- other than a "thanks" and a logging system that allows the company to take credit for my hard work, support has never existed for employees.

There once was a corporate initiative to grow STEM education through FIRST, but it fizzled because the corporate guys put guys in charge of it who have absolutely no passion about STEM education in general. Did my one corporate contact listen to me? Hardly. His son graduated from my team and I haven't heard from him since. Corporate gave some money to some teams one year.

I'm sure I sound disenfranchised about it. To be honest, I am. But life goes on and I still do great work.

So I'm head of CAD. Yea, the guy who programs and helps hold together a 17 million line system doesn't program a single word on the robot. But at least I don't have to be at the school to do it; the projects I'm on are less flexible with the FLEX scheduling we get.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I am very well supported.

I work for Delphi, the primary corporate sponsor of the team I mentor. The company provides the bulk of the team's funding, including travel and lodging for "official Delphi mentors" who travel with the team (I don't actually work for the same division that sponsors the team, but I do get counted as official). I get to charge my days attending FRC events with the team to the special account set up for that purpose, so I'm not required to take vacation for Thursdays and Fridays when the team competes.

My mentoring is recognized by my supervisor as an important part of what I do. I also perform my "real" job well enough that nobody gripes when I take some time at work to read and answer Chief Delphi posts.

(I do have to take vacation days if I choose to volunteer at FRC events that the team is not competing at. I'm doing that in Hawaii this year.)

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

PTC has nearly 300 employees who volunteer for FIRST programs all around the world. PTC has been very supportive of those activities, including implementing a Community Volunteer Day Policy - encourages employees to participate in non-profit volunteer activities for up to two "work" days per fiscal year without taking paid time off.

In terms of supporting teams financially, PTC sponsors 110 FTC and FRC teams. Every team that has a PTC mentor is given the opportunity to apply for a PTC grant. PTC also sponsors JFLL/FLL teams. We will provide the cost of registration/intro kit for every team that a PTC employee is associated with.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Mentor Mac, None, nothing at all. Post Office! Can you see and under stand. I put my own money out and time. Go team 686. God Bless All

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My company has been supporive. They donate to the local regional and give up to 40 hours/year of time for community support. We also can apply once a year if we donate 50 hours of time they will also give $500 to the 501.c.3 organization.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I've been mentoring for 10 years and have worked for few different companies.

During that time, I've had various levels of support. My current employer has been the best of the bunch, but, they are also a LARGE contributor to NYC FIRST. In all of my employers though, being in IT for me means being on call 24/7 so regular shift hours can vary. Although normally it's 9-5.

1st employer, My supervisor "looked the other way" when I'd leave at 3PM during build season. I couldn't do it every day, but at least 2-3 days a week. As for events, it was use my vacation time(I had 4 weeks) . They donated nothing.

2nd employer, allowed me to shift my hours so I could leave at 3PM everyday during build. Again, use my vacation time for events(I had 4weeks). They donated nothing.

My current employer, gives me 1 day off with pay for charitable work & pays our teams registration fee. Other than that its use my vacation time(I have 4 weeks). However, they are very supportive of FIRST so I get a far amount of leeway as long as I don't abuse the privilege.

So all in all, it varies highly on your employer and sometimes your direct supervisor as much support you have.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My company, The PTR Group Inc - www.theptrgroup.com, are major sponsors of 4 teams (116, 620, 1296 and 2537). And they are EXTREMELY flexible about time during build season. They do all this despite being a pretty small company - so I'm pretty lucky!

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

Its interesting to see the range of levels here. I used to work for Harris when I ran 1511, and they are truly an incredible sponsor...
1511's team meetings were mostly after work hours (6pm or later), but there were a few times where there were demonstrations or meetings that I or other mentors would need to attend, and although it varied by manager, the company was very supportive. Most weeks we had so much work to do that we would just make it up in that week at other times. In the case that we were busy/unable to make it up, we were allowed to take Personal Time (for which Harris had unlimited - though everyone used it within reason).

While I didn't technically get "paid" for running 1511, for several years it was actually on my goals & performance review. They recognized it as incredibly beneficial to the company and as part of their "corporate responsibility" so I always got "credit" for my leadership of the team. Again, there wasn't a budget for hours to spend on it, but I flexed my time in all sorts of ways... some days for competition prep I could spend 75% of my day doing FIRST work, but in general it evened out as I often worked 60hrs most weeks and traveled a lot. But it was nice that no one was micromanaging my time. As long as I could meet company deadlines and get my job done, I was free to do what I needed for FIRST.

Harris is a very generous sponsor. We got plenty of funding to not only run the team, but also to fund the travel for all of the mentors involved (including non-Harris employees). So all of our trips were paid for. In addition, for competitions each of us got one to two days "off" (based somewhat on level of effort/who needed to travel early with the team), marked as Personal Time to attend the competitions.

Not to be overlooked was their donation of shop time and materials that they give to the team every year. We end up a bit at the mercy of current work, but the fact that they allow their machinists to work on our parts and get us plenty of them was a huge leap in our productivity. We even brought the robot in to show the guys in 2008 just before we shipped it, as they were so instrumental in helping us get some really impressive parts made.

There is also plenty of company recognition for the mentors. We were often recognized in the weekly email newsletter or monthly company newsletter. The trophies were on display on the executive floor. And every year they had a luncheon to recognize all of the mentors with the Harris senior staff (non-Harris ones invited) and when corporate funding allowed (most years), the Harris mentors received small bonuses & recognition certificates.

Some other little things included that they had a system where you could track your volunteer hours, and those who did would get a pin and certificate, and I believe they were building that up to be more. They also worked into our signed funding request that we would be allowed to do fundraisers onsite, so the first year we sold hexbugs we sold cases and case of them at Harris! Our carwashes and other fundraisers get advertised in their newsletters, and we could post fliers around the company. Additionally a lot of the administrative assistants would help us with everything from packing our patron drive folders to doing the submissions for our mastercards monthly and helping us with printing for documents for our competitions.

For me, the benefit was huge... I felt like my name was known everywhere in the company. The president and VPs knew me by name & face and often said hi to me in the hallways. One of the stories I've told before, that I think clearly echo's Harris's support is from one of our midyear meetings. Our President was talking about the company, corporate outreach etc etc. He said "And the Robotics team did great this year!!..." and elaborated on our awards. He went into something else and then started up with "And the other weekend I was in the grocery store... dressed down, but I had a Harris Tshirt on. This lady stopped me and said "Oh, do you work at Harris??" I said of course. The lady asked "Oh do you know Kim O'Toole?? She does great things with that robotics team!!!"... and gushed about our team... Then she turned around and asked "So what do YOU do at Harris?""... He of course laughed and said he was the President. As he told this story I was simultaneously mortified and shrinking down in my chair, but also incredibly proud that not only had we garnered this amount of respect for the "Harris Robotics Team", but our president had enough of a sense of humor to recount the story to the entire company.

Above all else when I've mentioned Harris's sponsorship to others, I say that really, they just "get it". We were fortunate that the Chief of Engineering Finance had been involved in FIRST with Harris back around 96, so he knew the program and its benefits. And while it took a little bit of work to build the partnership that exists today, they really have been great. To me it was ironic that it never mattered to them how well we did or what awards we won, they were just happy that we were helping students get interested in STEM careers... yet 1511 is the most successful team I have ever been involved in.

I'm still learning the ropes with my new employer, but they push us to have "an external footprint", for which FIRST seems to qualify, and they allow us to take up to 16 hours off at a time that we can make up within a period of time.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My employer (Ford) gives small donations of things like fasteners, etc. As far as I know, all of our volunteers do so on their free time, and no one is compensated in any way.

I do spend time while I'm at working working on FIRST, but it isn't technically 'sanctioned' and I have to be very careful to maintain job performance at the same level I have when FIRST isn't in season.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

My work is very generous. They let me use my vacation to attend events if I can get those dates. They support my efforts to mentor the team as long as it is on my own time.

I am able to each year to choose to come to work at 4:00 AM and get off at 12:30 PM. This allows afternoons and nights for volunteering. The problem is that at times during build I have health problems related to sleep deprivation. My normal is 5 hours a night but 2 or more nights in a row of 3-4 hours and my body says no more. Only 11 days until I can start catching up.

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

X2

-I get up for work at 5am, finish at 3:00,
-Head to the school from 3:30-6:00,
-Get a bite to eat at the healthiest fast food place I can find,
-Help out at another sponsor's tool and die shop from 6:30-10pm+.

On weekends, I finish the weekly cycle early at 9:00, then:

-Drive from London Ontario to Toronto Ontario (2 hours)
-Spend the night at my parents house, where I get to sleep in until 7am and get a home-cooked meal!
-Pick up an old highschool robotics buddy of mine and we drive from Toronto Ontario to Stayner Ontario (another 2 hours north) where we help another team work at their sponsor's shop until about 4am in the morning.
-Resume work at about 10am.
-Leave at 7pm (this often gets pushed back to 9pm) and drive 2 hours to Toronto where I drop my friend off.
-Depart for London at 9:30pm.
-Arrive in London for 11:30pm if I don't have to stop to rest.

-- resume weekly cycle

My coffee budget is out of sight...

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

I can't thank you all enough for your participation in this thread. I've summarized what I have heard here and other interviews I've conducted. It is my hope that this reference can be helpful to mentors working with their companies looking to boost participation in FIRST and organizations like this.

I appreciate all the sentiments regarding volunteering being it's own reward and I agree with them. However, there are companies (and teams) looking to increase participation in programs like these and are looking for the best ways to help encourage the participation of qualified people and steer them towards these types of deserving activities. By summarizing and documenting what is happening in the community I hope to offer some level setting for companies looking to put programs in place to help remove barriers to participation.

Here is my summary of what I'm reading the responses above and what I have heard in my other interviews.

I divided the Support into the following categories: (The percentages won't add up because some companies offer more than one type of support.)

No Support (20%)
(Interesting thing here is that the sentiment is almost that the employer is working against the mentor rather than just not supporting them.)

Indirect or Informal Support (30%)
This includes supportive managers and flexible scheduling.

Support through recognition (10%)
Awards, pins, company newsletter articles.

Support through company assets (20%)
Donation of shop time, administrative help, copying, meeting space etc.

Support through financial donation (25%)
Direct financial support of team or regional.

Support through Employee compensation or Reimbursement (44%)
Includes bonuses, paid days off, travel, lodging, payroll account charge for volunteer hours.

20% of companies have a volunteer hour tracking that may or may not offer incentives based on set milestones.

I'm still working on a complete report for my company, but I hope this will help summarize what was posted here and give a reasonable reference source for everyone.

Good luck at Regionals!

Thank you,

Re: Mentors: How does your company support you?
 

The Company I just started working for is very flexible with days and they are giving me the days off for regionals and not taking away vacations days.