Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Having talked with volunteers, Key Volunteers, and Volunteer Coordinators from district areas, it isn't as easy as that. When a team is required to supply volunteers, you never know what you're going to get. Further, those required volunteers aren't really dedicated to the event - as a result, you end up with people signing up then dropping out, and a lot more work for the Volunteer Coordinator. Then you also get people who just don't show up to the event... how do you deal with that? What about small teams with a few kids and 1 mentor? How do you require them to supply volunteers?
The simple fact is that MN has 4 events, and just slightly more volunteers than we need to run 2 of them. Fortunately, almost everyone who lives in the Cities, and thus volunteers for their "home" regional in Minneapolis, also drives up to Duluth - you end up seeing all the same people at both double regionals (In all fairness, there are some volunteers from the Duluth area... but I doubt it's enough to put on even a single regional). That model simply won't work for Districts. We'll have 5 in the Cities, and everyone will volunteer there... all of the out-state events in places like Rochester, Fargo, Duluth, St. Cloud, and wherever else they end up would be horrible to try to run.
Add to that difficulties with Key Volunteers... we have 4 events in the state, but only 2 LRI's, for example. On top of that, we have a single Volunteer Coordinator that handles all 4 events. I wouldn't want to put the pressure of managing 10 events all on her shoulders!
These are all problems that will take time (years) to fix, as we need our local FRC teams and population to mature.
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Much of that describes us in the PNW, except that the OR event had it's own volunteer coordinator and the 3 in WA were handled by the same person. Yet we are pushing forward in hopes of making the district model work this year after working to that goal since last season when FIRST wanted us to go to the district model.
So my suggestion is to start scouting places for district events and double down on your volunteer recruitment and get key volunteer people trained this year by shadowing the existing people in those positions this season. FIRST has made it clear that the way forward is the district model better to get ahead of the curve than getting the word that all of the US will be using the district system and be left scrambling.