Quote:
Originally Posted by trezelle2
I have noticed that, while we get a few new faces each year, the amount asked of each of the members due to the team size has influenced some students to decide that the team is too great a commitment and dial back participation or leave.
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It sounds like this might be the biggest problem. Convince a few people that it's too much work, and they'll tell their friends when they leave, and suddenly your team has a reputation around the school that you can find it hard to overcome.
So, how much does the team actually do? Is there anything you can scale back on to make things easier? FIRST is actually a really good program when you look at scalability of work. There's a lot that you
can do, if you have the time and people, but it's actually relatively simple to do the bare minimum (assembling a kitbot and bringing it to competition) without worrying about community outreach, chairman's, making a website, making buttons, etc. Cut all of that other stuff out and focus on what the team needs this season. Get a simple gear-bot done, get to competition, and have fun. Let the word spread, try to make the team sound both fun and low commitment.
Then, only add stuff back in as you have students to handle it. The more students you get, the more you can do.
Recruitment and retainment are two separate beasts, but you need both to be successful. It doesn't matter if your recruitment is awesome and you bring in 20 new freshmen every year. If you lose half of those by the end of the season, and half of the remaining don't come back the following year, you're going to be in a world of hurt. On the other hand, recruit 5 freshman every year and keep them all 4 years, and you'll be looking pretty good.
My team's school is pretty small as well, about 300 students. We have 20-30 students every year, and the team has been growing recently. Our recruitment isn't anything too special - demo's and we reach out to the incoming freshmen and invite them to a 2-week summer camp. Those that show up to the camp usually end up staying with the team.
But where it shines is in retainment. We've created an internal culture of achieving what we can for our size team. We have clearly defined participation goals for the students (50% attendance to travel, 80% attendance to letter) and a pre-determined schedule for the entire school year. Everyone knows what they're getting into from the start, all we have to do then is make the meetings engaging, fun, and productive!