Quote:
Originally Posted by crollison
Most years I'm scared that we will make it to worlds as I'm not sure we could pull together the funds to go. We don't have the funds for a second regional and definitely don't have enough for a second robot.
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We're fortunate to be within an hour drive of Bayou regional, so we haven't had major travel expenses for our first four regular seasons. We've never before had enough for entry fee to for a second regional, much less travel. This is the first year we were able to build a second robot (helped by a BOM that came to about $1500). We ranked #42 at Bayou, but got picked 23rd for some of our distinctive abilities (some of which were developed
after bag and tag) and wound up going to CMP. We knew that our school board would pay the $5k for our entry fee, but that left about $15k for travel, meals, and incidentals. It would normally have taken us about six months to raise that much! We hit the streets and the internet and raised it in about three weeks. We offered a trip to the junior varsity member (later expended to two when a varsity member couldn't make it) to the biggest fund raiser of the JV. Two of our JV members
each raised more than $1000 in those three weeks (one of them was inside the Oscar the Grouch costume at the mascot dance before Einstein). We actually shot a good bit over our basic fund raising goals, and (with our new sponsors) we're seriously considering a second regional in 2016.
We came back from CMP with great ideas for our design and build process, some info on how to get FRC recognized (and at least partially funded) by the school system, and a bit of homework from the Kamen himself to spread the inspiration faster and farther than ever before.
So, it sounds kind of backwards, but we're using our trip to CMP as a launch pad to the next levels of competition, fundraising, outreach and most of all, inspiration. It makes you wonder if having multiple CMPs isn't an entirely bad thing.