[pfreivald]

1551 has always been a small-ish team from the middle of nowhere, though we've expanded by recruiting students and mentors from nearby schools. Small schools face the issue of having students that do FIRST, but also swimming, basketball, Academic All Stars, Jazz Band, etc, etc, etc -- so at any given time we may only have four to eight students working, and projects must be passed off as students leave and arrive. Centralized information database (or engineering notebook(s)) are essential when projects are being worked upon by different groups at different times. Shared network space and smart boards help a lot with this. A consistent schedule where kids sign up when they will be there and for how long is something we keep intending to implement, and keep not doing it -- though that's going to change for next year.

Fundraising is a constant struggle because we are limited by the school in what we are *allowed* to do (so that we don't take too much money from other clubs/groups) -- though since we were adopted into the Bausch + Lomb family things have been insanely better on that front! Their support is invaluable and essential for the continuation of our team, but we have to put in a lot of effort to bring in more money.

Mentorship has improved greatly for us, but for the first few years it was very hard. (We had no engineers for three years, and no programming engineers for four!) I very, very highly suggest demoing your robot anywhere you can -- our FLR Woodie Flowers Award Finalist electrical engineer was recruited in the grocery store, and one of our new programming mentors is the dad of a kid we recruited from a school next door.

Continuity can be hard, because fluctuations in interest from grade to grade can result in 20-50% membership number drop or increase. (The one kid who can program moves or graduates or whatever. Eek!) Peer and mentor training throughout the year is critical to long-term success.

Those are my thoughts for the moment, abridged because I have students coming in to learn some electrostatics!