Discounts
 

Do we still have to count the donations in our total money used for the robot?

Re: Discounts
 

Donations of cash used to buy parts, yes. Donations of just parts, not usually.

EDIT: I should say, machined/fabricated parts that are donated are not usually counted (although some argue that the "fair market value" applies to those parts as well).

Re: Discounts
 

You usually have to determine a fair market value for all the parts on your robot even if it's just guess work. So if a parent donated all the aluminum for our robot, we cannot list it as free. We must determine the fair market value of what it would cost to purchase said aluminum used on our robot and mark it as such in our BOM. 1678 will often pull prices from McMaster if we don't have better records of the cost of something we got long ago or scavenged.

Re: Discounts
 

The exceptions are listed pretty clearly. "Sponsor employees who are members of the team" is the category that is most loosely defined. If you have a sponsor employee mentor who is using the machine shop (or other resources) at work for the benefit team, I recommend that you be prepared to provide some documentation that this employee really is a mentor, not just a hired hand of the sponsor who is uninvolved with the student team members. Have them sign up as a mentor in TIMS. Take some pictures of them working with student members. Keep mentor sign-in sheets. Something!

Re: Discounts
 

As others have said you have to follow the cost accounting rules. Rather or not the parts are donated or bought with donated funds is immaterial. The rules that decides what is a sponsor and who is a "sponsor member of the team" are so vague I don't know what kind of documentation an inspector could require.