Quote:
Originally posted by SharkBite
My team, Rhode Warrior has been partnered with a division of the Navy for all 8 years of our participation. Because they are funded by the government however, we cannot recieve any funding from them.
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Huh?!?? Becky, I am not sure what you have been told, but there must be more to the story. There is no prohibition against teams being funded by government sources, either by FIRST or the government.
FIRST has a long history of government-sponsored and government-funded teams partcipating in the competition. NASA, US Army, US Army Aberdeen Proving Grounds, US Coast Guard, US Department of Energy, Sandia National Labs, US Naval Academy, US Naval Research Lab, David Taylor Naval Research Laboratory, etc. have all sponsored and funded teams, and they are all federal government sources. Beyond that, there are even more teams that have received local and state government support.
Your Navy sponsors may be running into problems with the Dept of Defense procurement system, which is notoriously arcane, and may not have found a way to get funding through the system and to your team. If that is the case, please feel free to have them contact me, and I will be glad to share the paperwork and justification we used to navigate through the NASA procurement system for the past several years (we have obviously been successful at this, as this year NASA is providing partial or full funding support to nearly 200 teams). I also have contacts with a few of the other Navy-sponsored teams, and they may be able to help even more.
-dave
Just a gentle reminder that every now and then the phrase "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" is not a joke.