Thanks for the thread. I've been looking for the answer to this question for a while. Asking around, I've found team budgets seem to fall anywhere between 10k$ per year to as much as 80k$, depending on how many events they attend, how far they travel, and what costs are on or off their books (for instance whether travel and accommodation costs are covered by parents, or workspace and insurance costs are covered by the school).
My team fell somewhere in the middle last year. Our expenses can be broken down into the following groups, in order of cost from least to most money:
- Tools and shop equipment (for our first year)
- Robot parts
- Jerseys and printing
- Registration (one event & champs)
- Travel & Accomodations (to St. Louis)
The last two forming about 2/3 of our budget. Raising that kind of money is tough. We have a lot of work left to do fundraising ourselves. I do think schools, sponsors and parents get a lot of value for their money though, so I hope you succeed!