Quote:
Originally Posted by Beth Sweet
Ken, this is why we all adore you...
Problem: Many volunteers for competitions are from teams. Teams will not know until very shortly before the Michigan championship if they will make it and thus volunteers will be scarce for the biggest Michigan event (ex. my parents ran pit admin at GLR this past year, with 1243's mentor as their guy in charge of parts/tech issues. 1243 may not know until the week before if they make states or not so they cannot volunteer)
Solution: I'm still pondering, I hope that people will help with this one!
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Good Point Beth. Which is why I have serious questions about where all of the volunteers for districts are supposed to come from, especially if there are two districts on the same weekend. If teams are supplying volunteers for districts & the state event, are there enough flexible resources to go around volunteering for events and running teams w/out burning people out?
Personally speaking from a small team perspective (of which is reported by Jim Z as representative of a majority of MI teams), after having volunteered at both the Kettering Rookie and Great Lakes Regionals- in addition to attending our events at Midwest and West Michigan for 2008, it takes a LOT of extra volunteer time and personal resources, that could otherwise be spent with ones own team or taking a break with family during the season. How many people do they think will be willing to take or make that extra FIRST time year after year?
If Kettering holds a district for '09 I KNOW I would be hard-pressed to actually volunteer, or provide volunteers during the event (though we will unquestionably support it in some capacity) as well participate with the team. Being the local event, it would not make sense for us to just volunteer as hosts and not participate, though at the same time we are in the best position to be local volunteers... Being effectively the same as a regional event now, I fear we might be over-estimating the volunteer resources we might otherwise have locally available from teams for a Rookie, or Off-Season event. Flint, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ypsi area events will probably be OK, as there is a substantial experience base, but new areas...
Should we qualify for state, you're right -volunteering for an event we also are paying big $$ to attend takes on an entirely different tune.
Someone referenced filling the gap with travelling or out-of-state volunteers. This is great, but who's paying for THEIR expenses? How sustainable is this past 2009 if everyone else moves towards this format? There's a fine line between volunteering turning to expectation.
I am also one of the people scratching their head wondering why we are going to be paying $5000 for essentially two $400 Off-Season Events (or what we knew as Off-Season events)