Quote:
Originally Posted by mentorDon
I don't have a problem with mentors helping students. You could bring every NASA engineer as far as I'm concerned. My problem is with NASA or other large corporations supplying the manufacturing time and materials for some of these robots. I wrote a letter last year to First expressing my thoughts about these $1,000,000 robots. If the rules were changed so that all materials and manufacturing time were included in the cost of the robot, that would level the playing field for all teams. Time to eliminate the free ride from major sponsors.
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Five years ago, our club started the fall out in debt about $4,000, no shop and only a couple of sponsors. The leadership of the club (I arrived the following year) realized that the long term sustainability of the club was in grave jeopardy. Some folks looked at the "privileged" clubs with jealously/disdain. However, most of our leaders instead looked at them as examples. What do we need to do in order to replicate their successes? How can we get what they've got?
This started a fundamental change in how our club operates. Outreach became a vital part of our club's activities. We'll show off our robot to pretty much anybody at pretty much any time. We march in parades. We visit local tech companies. We go to elementary schools. We talk to the Chamber of Commerce and School Board. We know just how important our FIRST program is in our community and we make it our mission to make sure that the rest of the community knows it, too! We then ask for help. Sometimes we get help. Sometimes we don't. We always offer to come back, though.... We write letters to friends, community leaders, family members and so on. We make sure that everybody knows just how expensive it is to run a good club... And it is amazing how generous the community can be.
We now operate on a budget of well over $100K. We serve over 100 kids (but only charge $50 to participate for the year)... We have plenty of money for training materials, extra robots, etc. We have the monetary capacity to do anything we want to do in order to compete at the highest levels. It wasn't that hard: it just took patience, a little time and a little work.
Instead of being envious of teams that benefit from generous sponsors, go out and get them yourself. We look at our team as a small business. If our business is going to thrive, we need to maintain a strong and steady cash flow. That money is not just going to come to us. Rather, we need to actively seek it out.