[hionwind]

All teams are faced with the issue of retaining current team members and recruiting new ones. Since you are going to lose your seniors every year, recruitment has to be a part of your program. Here are some of things that our team has found to help with retention and recruitment:

1. Provide structure and organization within your team. Nothing hurts a team more than being disorganized. Define your sub-teams and what each of their roles are. Plan your meetings and communicate clearly when those meetings will take place and what objectives are to be met.

2. Plan an "Open House" either at the end of competition season or during the fall (or both). Make sure that this is well-organized and provides opportunities for the attendees to get involved with some hands-on projects. We usually have workshops set up for electronics, programming, mechanical, or business-media and have the attendees rotate through each workshop. Have a sign-up sheet and be pro-active about contacting the attendees after the event to keep them informed about your team and it's activities.

3. Invite all your current team members and potential recruits to an off-season competition. There is no better way to get people interested in FIRST.

4. Develop your mentor base. Find quality mentors that want to work with kids. This is not easy but is a key component of every successful team.

5. Have FUN! I cannot overemphasize how important this is. We all do this to have fun. If it's not fun, you are not going to retain or attract students. One of the things our team has done to keep it fun is to host a WADPAN. This stands for "work all day, play all night". We plan an intense workday, arrange a team dinner, and then break out the fun and games for an evening of team bonding.

Hope that this helps.