Re: Limit team $
 

Let's hear it for the Brave Little Toasters!

Re: Limit team $
 

Phrase of the day:

The Tall Poppy Syndrome...

look it up...

Re: Limit team $
 

Isn't there a quote out there that says that you don't progress by dragging the rich down, but by raising the poor up?

Re: Limit team $
 

I agree whole heartily with Glenn.

Coming from outside the mainland creates the situation where most of our budget goes to travel, lodging and shipping. The rest we use to help subsidize the student’s ability to participate. Most of our students’ families are working multiple jobs just to survive here. We will normally charge half of the per student cost of the trip to each team member. We also have scholarships provided by local supporters to help bring down costs for deserving students in need. We come from a school that has over 80% on free / reduced lunch services. Add in the fact that everything we might need to order has to come from out of the state and across 2500 miles of ocean. Minimum delivery is 3-5 days with paying for expedited air freight shipping.

Basically everything we do costs two to three times as much. Coupled with coming from an island that has little to no industry to draw upon for support. We are known for only a few things on this island, cattle, fishing, and coffee. We fundraise and do outreach all year long, at least one fundraiser and two community outreach events per month.

Even our local regional event is a flight away. The airfare alone can easily be from $150-250 per person depending on how far in advance you can book them. And of course if you book them as a group or use the DOE travel service its more..

Imagine that to take less than half your team, 20 students, and the 3 mentors to the world championship costs over $50,000. Let alone having to raise that in the 2-4 weeks after qualifying for the event.

Our program started with 4 students and 3 mentors. We have grown to over 75 students in our three years as a program. We plan on continuous growth. We have 100% of our graduating students going on to great colleges.

First has helped these students with gaining scholarships to schools such as Rice, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, Sarah Lawrence, Rochester, University of New Mexico, UH Manoa and many others.

This is at a school where less then 35% actually graduate and of that less than 20% go on to college. This program is making a huge difference in our community and cannot be held back by limiting funding.

Creating a cap on our budget would kill the programs potential to grow and enhance the community by creating future leaders.

If anyone has questions please feel free to message or email me. I would be more than glad to share.

Re: Limit team $
 

Just to remind everyone,
1. Different parts of this country vary wildly in local costs and travel costs. Other countries are extremely different.
2. Some schools cover things like bus travel while other teams must pay for everything.
3. Some teams have very generous sponsors while others struggle to find materials and labor.
4. Small teams have significantly lower costs compared to larger teams for things like food, travel, tshirts, and other operating expenses.
For these reasons it is nearly impossible to impose a fixed amount that is equal without making most teams suffer.

Re: Limit team $
 

The costs involved with long-distance travel to events are not insignificant, our team would struggle to stay within the budget to attend just one regional, and it would be impossible to attend more than one event (regional + championships).

Travel being the obvious one, there are still numerous complications that need to be addressed:

How about exchange rates? Is this in USD? If so which exchange rate do you use? Time of transaction? Time of exchange? Kick-of? Bag'n'Tag?

Operating costs for us are also much larger. Postage and generally higher prices in Australia can't be discounted, and mean that for us to build an equivalent robot to a mainland team we need a significantly larger budget.

What about other expenses? Our team attends and runs a number of out-reach events, including an off-season that teams who can not afford to travel to a regional attend. Limiting our budget would force us to chose between running this event, and running our team. In this case limiting our budget would not only hamper our robot and team, but also our efforts to spread STEM and FIRST in Australia.

It's clear that in many ways, a team budget would not help even the playing field. FIRST teams are about so much more than the robot, to limit the TEAM because of robots is unfair, and would do far more harm than good.

Finally, in a discussion about budgets it's important not to forget the sponsors, sponsors put resources into this program because they see the value of it, and for that my tea and myself are extremely grateful. But how do you explain to a sponsor that sees something they want to support and grow, that they can't?

Re: Limit team $
 

This would hardly level the playing field.

Nearly all the big budget teams have a well established engineering program going. If FIRST decides to cap the funds that they could raise, those teams would just divert their funds to their "engineering programs" or to other created entities. When they need more money for travel or such expense, the entity would just "donate" what they need, easily bypassing any such rule. All this would do is make the teams who could not create such entity reduce their standards.

Also, not all the money in many team's robotics programs goes to FIRST. My team does a lot of cool off-season projects and needs that money to continue. Other teams do this too, notably Shockwave by 254.

Re: Limit team $
 

Not quite sure if this is such a good idea. I think the process of finding sponsorships is a big part of running a robotics team. Learning to communicate and work in a partnership with major corporations is a very good skill that will definitely be useful later in life, especially after college. The financial aspect that comes with running a team is another responsibility that prepares us for what real life has to offer.

Re: Limit team $
 

Our team's largest budget we've ever had (this year) was around $17,000 and we thought we seemed to think we had money coming out of our ears.

Re: Limit team $
 

I think it has all been said, but this is not a good way to accomplish your goal.

As for the Hawaii teams, can't they just drive over? :rolleyes:

Re: Limit team $
 

Not sure about driving, but I'm sure they can sail across

Re: Limit team $
 

Love it,

Though I suggest going straight to Long Beach Harbor and save yourself the 1000+ miles of driving...;)

Can you imagine the 11+ days of ocean travel... :eek:

Makes my stomach roll thinking about that voyage

Re: Limit team $
 

Interesting phrase. It seems our large corporations of Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, and the like seem to exasperate this method in terms of taxation in order to stamp down the upstart economies. An Internet tax will only benefit those companies with the resources to fund large accounting departments. The mom and pop shops that depend on Internet sales will go quietly into the dark if our legislatures are not well educated.

Soap Box, sorry.

Re: Limit team $
 

A tale of two cities...

This is a tale of two competing FRC teams separated by a river and an ocean of ideologies.

'Team B' invited 'Team M' to take part in a dual-school effort where they could find support from the teams combined local industries, thus creating a combined effort of achievement.

'Team M' decided that they would be best served by being supported by their local school and therefore arrested by the constraints of the school district. They received start-up monies and a coaching salary based upon their district's schedule C.

'Team B' continued on the path of resourcing the local industries and companies.

'Team M' found early success by being supported by their district, and thus looked no further.

'Team B' was not supported by their district, yet continued to find support from local industries and beyond.

Re: Limit team $
 

Actually, we need to have more threads where this sort of thing is discussed in a way that is relevant to FIRST and society. But you're not being clear about the relevance of taxation (and in particular, Internet taxation¹) to the conversation.

¹ At the risk of diverting the main topic of the thread, there's another interpretation of the scenario you outlined: assuming the government's intent is to tax businesses at an equal proportion of their revenues, the lack of effective tax collection from the smaller businesses amounts to a subsidy directed toward them that was not envisioned by the legislators. If there is value in that subsidy, then shouldn't efforts be directed at recognizing that fact, and pushing for it to be made an explicit part of policy? Or is it justifiable to allow the distortion of the legislative intent to continue, because there is a net benefit to doing so (including possibly less risk that the subsidy will be eliminated)?