Winnovation FIRST Team 1625 has a great bunch of parents too - and as kids have graduated, we have several alumni parents (including our lead mentors!) who have remained active along with some alumni grandparents and aunts and uncles.
Along with the standard roles, we ask each family to provide two meals during build season. Basically, our parents provide food every evening around 6pm, and then lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sundays. This keeps the kids from driving around looking for food, ultimately saves money, and *hopefully* keeps everyone eating healthier. We have a few families (very, very few) who are not able to or choose not to participate - their loss actually.
This year, we asked each family to provide an adult (over 21) to help with shop supervision for a 4-hour shift; this was to ensure a second adult was on site whenever the shop was open. This was well received as well. Some families who have not spent much time at the shop were encouraged to do so, and other families who spend a lot of time there got a break if they needed it. No special skills required--you might end up helping with strategy, assembly, marketing or just spending some one-on-one time with a teen who needs that interaction.
I used to take our parental involvement for granted. At a team social at one of last year's regionals a parent from a local team remarked how they had to make a couple of trips to get all the kids to the regional. We had at least one parent for 25 of our 30 kids at the out-of-town regional, along with grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
This year I blogged about our "bot shop" being
the busiest spot in town on a Saturday night.