[IKE]

I had an idea a few years ago that I have been trying to get support for, but I wouldn't even know who to pitch the proposal. The concept would be that approved mentors would be able to get a tax rebate relative to hrs. spent on mentoring in approved programs. I think a cap on hours and some sort of "record" would have to be established, but the basic parameters would be something like:

Mentors of approve program may deduct up to 200 hrs x minimum wage from itemize tax returns.

So, if you spent 250 hrs. on FIRST, you would reach the cap of 200 hrs. and be able to deduct 7.25 x 200 hrs or $1450 from your taxable income.

If your upper earnings are around the 30% bracket, you would thus get back: $1450 x 0.3 = $435.

I think one could argue for a larger amount of hours, but I suspect if you go much larger than say 400 hrs, the value gets large enough that IRS would want significant sign-off vs. just some sort of receipt from team lead agreeing to the 200 hours.

Another concept I had for this match would be instead of the dollars going back to the person, it would go to the charitable organization. This would cause organizations to value having 2 people put in 200 hours vs. 1 person putting in 500 hrs. As the organization would see a higher return.

I could see this being abused, which is why I would initially limit it to organizations that are doing mentoring efforts.

To give a rough order of magnitude value:
FRC has 3,000 teams. Let's assume 2 mentors putting in 200 hrs/team on average. This would be 600,000 hrs. If FIRST was given $7.25 for each of those hours, we would be talking about $4.35 Million dollars of revenue. Even if USG prorated it relative to tax bracket with the average deduction matching someone in the 20% bracket, FIRST would still stand to see about $1 Million dollars of revenue.

Now, in FIRSTs annual report, it sites 10,000,000 hours of mentor/volunteer. If rated at $7.25/hr that would be $72.5M or 1.5X FIRST's current revenue (as of 2014 report). If only prorated via tax at an assumed 20% average bracket, it would be $14.5M

This could either lead to a 25% reduction in registration fees, or a lot of funds to help with grants.

If you read this, and think you might be able to help me flesh out this idea, please give me a PM. I really feel like there is a proposal here that could incredibly impact to many organizations (not just FIRST) like Big Brothers Big sisters, Scouts, 4-H....

Or you could keep your $400 and get something nice for your neglected family....