[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by craigbutcher

We are a rookie team and a question came up none of us anticipated. Does your sponsor own your robot? Do any other teams' sponsors hold the robots? Where do you keep the robots from past years?

What is the normal and ordinary practice?

Craig,

For 90% of the teams out there, you are a school in the USA being sponsored by an American corporation. As a school, your organization is most probably a nonprofit organization. In the U.S., the official designation is that your school is a 501(c)(3) organization.

If your organization is nonprofit, 501(c)(3), and the donation is made on that basis (tax deductible) then the donation is made with no strings attached. This means that the school can use the money to erect a giant statue of a pigeon in the school parking lot instead of building robots and there is not a thing that the corporation can do about it. Note however that it is unlikely that a corporation would continue funding a program which squanders its resources in such a callous manner...

I can not imagine that any sponsor would consider your robot the property of the company.

What does frequently happen is that the school may lend the robot to the company on an indefinite basis for display purposes as the good public relations of community outreach is something that the corporation will want to maximize.

I can't speak to teams in other countries or teams which are not 501(c)(3). However, for the rest of us, the robot would be the property of the school (not of the team).

Regards,

Mike