[ehochstein]

Lemiant, what I think would be great for your club would be to contact your city council and see if they will give you any funding for the team, or maybe let you come to the next city council meeting to show off your robot. I found that this strategy worked really well for our team when I implemented it two years ago.

Basically do everything you can to get your team known, brainstorm with your team ideas where you can show off FIRST and its values, then let people see, or drive your robot. You can really get the parent's attention when their son and/or daughter start pulling at them to go see a robot. In which case you care “upsell” the ideals of FIRST and what it means to be a FIRST team. You can consider this a long-term investment, because you know when the parent hears the words “scholarships” and “college” in the same sentence, they won't forget it. Also you might get lucky, like my team did, and meet a local company that wants to sponsor you, or a new mentor from the community that you wouldn't meet otherwise. Community events are a great way for your team to become known.

As a leader last year, I also had a problem with giving people things to do, but I found as long as I kept my eyes open for something to do I could make a list in my head of stuff for people to do. If I was working on the robot and I saw someone just standing around, I would have them either help me by handing me tools, or holding things for me. Really, if you just open your eyes and look at everything generally you can find something that needs to be done, or someone else that needs help.

I hope whatever I just typed above helped a little bit,
~Wiifi