2 things:
first off: sanddrag
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You charge your team members to participate? I hope that only goes for their own travel costs.
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That was in referance to 247's situation, I was not a mentor there so it wasn't my choice to charge for participation. The participation fee only applys to those whom wish to travel with the team. Also, the money is going towards each member's own travel costs... if it costs $1200 each that is, which I doubt. Close to $900 maybe, considering that one of the regionals we don't get a hotel or fly to, it's a 45 minute drive in the morning.
My rough estimates:
Hotel in Chicago area [3 nights / 3 people a room] $75 (25 per person, per night)
2-way ticket to Texas: $300-$350
Hotel in Texas [5 nights / 4 people in a room] $100 (20 per person, per night)
To me that adds up to be roughly $500 per person. The travel costs (to my knowledge) don't include food, which would be an additional less than $200 each.
Something seems awry, I hope I'm just missing a big peice.
secondly: danlevin247
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I think that it would be wonderful if FIRST was able to recognize the financial prediciment of some teams, and make their best effort to turn sponsors their way.
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FIRST itself is in a financial predicament, which is why some regionals are going to be "streamlined" to save money. The sponsors of FIRST do, in effect, sponsor teams. Example, SMC Pneumatics gives FIRST roughly $1.2M (raw value) in parts to go into kits, plus the cost of the shipment (According to a conversation with Dave Johnson of SMC). If they were to pick specific teams to sponsor it wouldn't be fair to the others. Given that there are just over 1000 teams participating in FIRST, that makes for $1,200 per team. I think that is a better deal than $5000 to one team and skimping on others. FIRST's major corparate sponsors aren't getting "name recognition" by sponsoring FIRST, yes they get their name all over the place, but the people that see it already know who they are.
Ok.. that stammered a bit, what I'm basically trying to say is that FIRST's sponsors are are already dropping a big load of money to help out all teams, it would be too hard to pick and choose who gets to be sponsored by FIRST's sponsors.
There are too many levels and needs by teams.. Financial, Material, Mechanical, Engineers.. the list goes on