So, say you're a team, and you have one month to fundraise. You can convince a company that could give you $10,000, or you could convince multiple smaller companies to give you a thousand here, a thousand there...which company do you target?
The one that will give you $10,000, of course. You've got tons of other stuff to do before Kickoff, the best short term answer is to go for the big fish.
Alternatively, from FIRST's shoes....say you have a town, and you can convince them to start only one team in 2006 before December: a FRC team, a FLL team, or a VEX team. Which makes most sense?
Financially, the big fish, starting a FRC team, wins out every single time.
***
Every team, no matter who they are, or where they are, is financially worth at least $6000 to FIRST, whether directly or indirectly. It is the major source of revenue, and compared to FLL and VEX, it makes more financial sense to start a new FRC team, since it will take multiple FLL or VEX teams to make up for the revenue that one FRC team pulls into the organization. (Plus, multiple FLL or VEX teams can take more time to create than just one FRC team.)
Because this is an easy form of revenue (not to mention being able to claim growth looks wonderful, page 4 of the annual report can tell you that), and to add that every added team creates just that more financial independence from the national sponsors.....creating new teams looks like a great place to focus the already limited volunteer resources on, right?
However....that does not mean that I agree that the focus should always be on growth.
Last year, when I created a
visual representation of the New England FRC teams, current and dormant, it shows that there are a lot of teams that are dormant. When I investigated into the reasonings as to why these teams could not always be resurrected, the reasons were varied...and all valid.
In this research, I have found there is what I call a "
fallout period" - a time in which an area is harder to be convinced to resurrect a team because they still remember what happened with the last one and have non-positive perceptions of the program. The fallout period ends in various ways - administration/teachers retiring or moving to other school systems, students graduating, etc. Thus, it is important to keep an eye on the inner workings of towns to see when the period is over.
Because of this, it is crucial to make sure that teams do not go dormant and enter this period, especially because growth will eventually come to a point where an area has no new school systems to reach.
But...today there are still new school systems out there. Since the situation favors creating new rookie teams, that's where the human resources (in this instance, time) are going to be focused.
It is up to us as the FIRST Community to pick up the slack and take care of each other. We are our best resource in the fight against dormancy.
How do we fight? Finding best practices. Reading and writing white papers. Talking on CD, at competitions, anywhere. This problem is very real and we are our own best defence.
-JAB