[GreyingJay]

1. Start thinking about the legal stuff. You'll need insurance. Insurance will require you to be a legal entity. Here in Ontario our community team is a registered not-for-profit corporation - and the application to do that means we need a written statement of objective, directors, policies, a name search, etc. None of this is difficult and you can probably copy/paste a lot of that stuff from other teams since all of our objectives and policies are similar. But it takes time to file, and your end goal is to have insurance in place by September or whenever you want to start meeting.

2. Put together a quick little package to give out as you are looking for sponsors (including space). A little brochure indicating who you are, what you do, what you're looking for, how to contact you. As a new team you won't have a robot to show pictures off, but maybe you can use pictures from your previous season on another team. Without putting the cart in front of the horse, the better you can make this look (in terms of having a logo and a bit of branding) the more credible and organized you will look.

2. Recruit mentors. These can be parents, they don't have to be technical, they don't need to have engineering experience, but you do need people who will help with team administration, managing students, and being willing to exercise their contacts.

3. Contact your local community centers, public library, city officials, anyone that you have contacts with, in addition to the employers of your students and parents. You could theoretically meet in someone's house if you used the garage as a build space and a room inside for "classroom" stuff like working on laptops. You are right to be concerned about liability, and if this is a path you still want to take, talk about it with your insurance provider to see what policy hoops you will need to jump through.

My team reached out to our local public library, who were happy to get involved and provide us with a great classroom meeting space. We can't build the robots here but we can do pretty much everything else. Then we reached out to another local community center who offered us a storage locker and the back area behind a gym during build season. (This arrangement actually won us a Judge's Award in 2016, as they were impressed by how we overcame these challenges and worked in public spaces, opening up tons of opportunities to tell people about FIRST and STEM).

4. Find ways to get your name out. Do a community event like a bottle drive or BBQ. Get an article in the community paper. You may not make a ton of money but that's not the point - it's to tell people "hey, we're a thing!"

5. Don't underestimate the amount of work it takes to start a team. It sounds like you're on a great track already and I wish you luck and success!