Let me start this off by saying the average size of a graduating class when I joined FIRST was 30 students at my high school. We had great support from both the school and community. We had around 20 students on the team, which was quite a feat. We had a huger percentage of involvement and this was based on 3 things: motivation, scope, and social.
Ironically the reason out team succeeded in spreading FIRST was because we didn't have a robotics club. FIRST became a whole different beast, and the robot honestly only brought 5 or so members to the team. So what did it for us:
Motivation- at the end of the year we got to take a trip to Houston with all of our closest friends
Scope- FIRST was not robotics (at least not in our high school), it was almost entirely business.
Social- Friends and couples made up our entire team.
Now this story even though I may sound optimistic is actually a tragedy. Because of the mixture of motivation and social, certain things occurred that were inappropriate and immature. The consequences of these actions killed our team. It killed the team because first the motivation when away, no more long distance trips. This killed the scope, as the we didn't need a business side (school sponsored one event). Which went on to kill the social side, even our closest friends weren't attracted to the program.
I believe that the teams that are able to integrate these three factors in their teams and are able to avoid the gfbf pitfall we ran into, have much better support from their schools and communities.
...another chapter in my business sells FIRST better series
