[EricH]

Dr. Joe, there is one thing that you will be very interested in. This started last year, and was pretty successful: the FIRST Choice program. Effectively, some items that maybe there aren't enough of for 2500 teams are put into a "store", first come first served, with all items in the "store" free. This can cut down costs on certain items, depending exactly what's in there. It's hosted at AndyMark's website, or was last year, which makes it fairly easy to place an AM order and have it arrive at about the same time.

IIRC, last year's included such items as some hand tools, an FTC starter kit, old but unused batteries, wire, and speed controllers.