Team Budget Per Season
 

Hi Teams,

I'm curious about your team budgets. We are a third year team from a small rural community in Ontario, Canada and would like to share this information with our potential sponsors to show them what we are up against.
It's quite difficult in our area to raise enough money to compete in this very worthwhile but expensive program.
We are fortunate to receive funding from our school board but even with that, last season we just broke even.
We must skimp on costs where possible and re-use as much as possible.
Not comfortable posting on the public forums? Send me a private message.

Thanks,
Dan

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

We normally spend about $12-14k per year, but this past year we did well enough to go to regionals & worlds', and spent twice that much. And we're lucky enough to have our meeting-space donated, so almost all of our expenses go to registration fees and robot part purchases.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

20-30k per year, I think, on average. We always attend a home regional, which involves 200 mile trip and hotel rooms, plus an out of state regional, which has even more travel. Some years we make it to Champs, but winning helps with fundraising (strange how that works out).

My last team was in a rural area as well and our budget looked like this:
Registration 5000
Robot parts and tools 1500
Travel (2 Vans/ scary cheap hotel) 1000
Everything else 500

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

Their are factors to cost of team budgets
1. number of students
2. number of events
3. type of robot
4. travel/hotel
5. food
6. media/outreach
7. miscellaneous

So depending on your situation or everyone else's is different, like I know teams with 10k or teams with 100k as budgets but it is cause of the program and team they are running and the number of sponsors they have contacted.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

It's pretty interesting how different teams budgets are.

We spend just under $50,000 a year. That includes everything we do, hotels, transportation, etc.

I've heard of teams spending around $6,000 total and I've also heard of teams spending $120-$150 thousand as well. Some of those big budgets include FTC, VEX, FLL, or other teams as well not just FRC but their entire robotics programs.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

As a fourth year rural Indiana team we have budgeted $13,500 for each of the past three seasons. Had we elected to accept a very last min. Championship invite we would have doubled that budget.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

Thanks for the thread. I've been looking for the answer to this question for a while. Asking around, I've found team budgets seem to fall anywhere between 10k$ per year to as much as 80k$, depending on how many events they attend, how far they travel, and what costs are on or off their books (for instance whether travel and accommodation costs are covered by parents, or workspace and insurance costs are covered by the school).

My team fell somewhere in the middle last year. Our expenses can be broken down into the following groups, in order of cost from least to most money:

1. Tools and shop equipment (for our first year)
2. Robot parts
3. Jerseys and printing
4. Registration (one event & champs)
5. Travel & Accomodations (to St. Louis)

The last two forming about 2/3 of our budget. Raising that kind of money is tough. We have a lot of work left to do fundraising ourselves. I do think schools, sponsors and parents get a lot of value for their money though, so I hope you succeed!

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

Our budget is the same. We have 30 to 45 members. We try to go to states and world's. We splurge some. We take a bus down and the team covers some hotel costs.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

We have about 60-70 students (maybe more this year) and spend ~50K annually
.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

As many have said above, it really depends on the amounts of students & where you're from.

We've been going to 1 regional + worlds for three years in a row. And our budget has been expanding since our first season.

In the infographic is our budget for this season. Based on +- 55 people going to 2 Regionals & Worlds. (Hopefully worlds)

So a big change for us this season!
From 36 people to 55 this year, and two regionals instead of one.

Our 2015 season budget was: 150k.


All our costs are €'s.
€198.500 = $ 225.000

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

You guys continue to be one of those teams I am amazed by. I hope we get to see you in St Louis again this year.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

Our team is planning on spending $50k this year if we qualify for Championships like last year. Without, it'll obviously be less. Our rollover as far as I know was pretty minimal and will hardly make a dent. We get most of our money from small business sponsors and student participation fees but we're hoping to get some larger corporate sponsors this year.

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

May I ask about the size of your student participation fees?

Re: Team Budget Per Season
 

I certainly appreciate all of your replies. Keep them coming.

Dan