[Doug G]

I think it also happen 2002 or 2003 when they upped the 2nd regional registration from $3000 to $4000.

From what I've seen, upping the registration fees has the greatest impact on new teams. For many veteran teams, they have systems in place to raise double the registration fees for a single competition year (ie: $20k for a couple of regionals). An additional $1k won't be as big of a hurdle as it would be for a newer team with less fundraising infrastructure.

Costs will inevitably go up at some point whether it is in reg fees, additional comp reg fees, travel expenses, material costs, etc... We all should be thinking about how to improve our team's fundraising each year to account for this. In business, they use a term, COLA, or Cost Of Living Adjustment. It's similar to inflation but also accounts for parameters specific to a region or industry. For us you may want to define a new term, CORPA, or Cost Of Robotics Program Adjustment. I think you should figure about a 5% increase to your budget each year is a minimum goal (Inflation is 3%). For us, our minimum target this year was $20k. That means we should shoot for a minimum of $21k next year. Ok this was a boring post - sorry to put you asleep.