First of all, thanks to everyone who dedicated some time to reply; you've all given some very helpful suggestions, and I've shared a few with our coach. He's willing to work with me and try to implement some of them, or to change a bit of how we run things.
Okay, since there're too many posts to quote individually, I'll just break down my responses into subjects:
Mentors/adult leadership: When we founded this team in 2011, we actually had two coaches and several regularly-attending mentors. Everything was easily taken care of with that system; no individual really got overwhelmed with tasks. But our second coach had to quit in 2012 because his wife gave birth to their child, and he wanted to be around for his new daughter. We still have many mentors who show up on a fairly regular basis, a few of which are parents or grandparents of students. However, our problems lie in the way the school district has set things up.
Because of all of those school shootings and other horrible incidents that have happened out of state over the past few years, our district is really pumping up its security measures. According to district policy, our coach is the only valid/official adult that students are authorized to be left alone with, because he's a school employee. In order to authorize other adults with this same responsibility, they would have to undergo fingerprinting, background checks, signing contracts, and attend specialized training. This whole process would take months to complete, and it costs that mentor several hundred dollars to do. No one wants to dedicate that kind of time and money.
Technically, we're not even supposed to let our other mentors into the building after hours.
We've tried asking around the district for other school employees that might be willing to fill in the second coaching position, but none of them really have time to dedicate to our team. So as of now, we rely on our coach for everything. Without him around, we cannot hold meetings. Without him, we cannot operate machinery. Without him, we cannot be at competitions. Without him, we cannot transport our robot anywhere. Without him, we cannot approach sponsors or attend community events or fundraisers.
I understand the school's reasoning, but it's getting ridiculously hard to operate under these restrictions. It's no wonder he's getting burned out; he's the one that has to be there for everything, the one that has to do everything for us on top of his teaching job (and these past two years, he's had to teach 5 separate subjects in 6 class hours due to budget cuts).
Early robotics programs: We're currently in the process of starting an FLL league with the local recreational center, and I've heard that there's a possibility we may even be teaming up with another local FRC team (503) to run some kind of out-of-district FLL team. This would encompass students from both districts and beyond, and would allow them to tap into both FRC groups for mentoring and management.
Keeping students interested: We've been competing in a local league known as OCCRA since 2006, which takes place from September through November. The competitions start in mid-October, and our new students almost always stick around just long enough to attend them... and then quit just before FRC season. We've tried almost everything to show them that FRC is waaaay cooler than OCCRA, but they rarely stick around anyway. For new students that join after the FIRST season, we highly encourage them to go with the team to off-season events such as MARC or IRI. Those students tend to be the most dedicated, we've found. We also have a varsity letter program in place to draw in more interest, and that
has given us a lot of hard-working members as well.
Recruitment: We recently attended the science festivals of two elementary schools in our district, which drew a lot interest from parents and students alike. We're also considering the possibility of setting up a permanent kiosk in one of the middle schools, which would play our "commercial" (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VR_hiq5RL4) and Chairman's videos like we've done at each of our competitions this season (kids love it! We literally had a dozen children just sitting in front of the little TV, watching the same few videos over and over until they could recite them from memory at Gull Lake. At Livonia, it was the
judges doing the same thing! LOL). I'll also be working with the team's new president at IRI to discuss other possible recruitment efforts: One I suggested was a "member swap" idea -- basically, for one day, we would trade our members for the members of another extracurricular club to give them an idea of what robotics is all about (and vice versa). It'd be a fun way of sampling all the school's activities equally, and to get the different clubs to become more closely affiliated with one another. I know the art department would just LOVE to get their hands on our robot...
Communication: We're looking into the possibility of using one of those text services. Otherwise, we've tried most of the other email strategies.
FIRST in the classroom: Our coach actually already uses FIRST in his classroom to teach concepts and garner some interest. Every year, right after kickoff, he uses the new year's challenge to start his Quality Function Deployment unit in his engineering classes. The goal is for students to think of theoretical solutions to the game, then to analyze them against the priorities of the QFD to determine which would be the most effective design. After exams, he allows his students to play with our robot from the previous season.