I've been tempted to post about "oh, teams fail for money reasons all the time" and some kind of silly counterargument or whatever, but with some hesitation I think that's a little silly. Enough teams fail for every reason that we might as well focus on all of them. I even have some "hypothetical" examples in there not based on any real world cases I'm a part of at all.
Fundraising on its own looks and can be very easy, especially for autonomous 501c3 teams. I think 501c3's have by far the easiest time with funding and it's not a coincidence that many big and successful teams exist this way. However, it sometimes gets a lot harder. Teams in school districts often have to have money donated to the school "for robotics". That alone cuts off some sponsorships. Sometimes the district has to approve every kind of fundraiser you do, and may prohibit particular fundraisers. Sometimes the paperwork takes a month so you can't even do any after a particular point.
The way around this particular problem fundraising wise is usually to be a big force. Get a lot of student interest and a lot of students with scholarships. Win regionals, Chairman's, and trophies to get a lot of respect and media attention for the team and school. Once you're successful enough to impress the school board they can help you get around some of these restrictions when they realize your club takes thousands more to run than the baking club. The problem is this generally is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. You need to win to get attention and respect as an organization, but having that helps you get the resources to win...
Leadership is a big thing. Most teams can't survive leadership changes, or the loss of a head mentor. I don't think there's really a way around this, other than to stop adding hundreds of rookies every season. If all the regions had ton of dedicated mentors just waiting for a robotics team to pour their soul into, no team would ever fail. If a team actually loses a dedicated mentor to a school budget cut or a layoff at a sponsor shop, that's really just a bad situation you usually can't get out of unless you've built up a large dream team of mentors already.
Sometimes your district can really bite you too. This has happened to a few teams I know of. Robotics teams are a large drain on resources relative to any other club, and schools are hesitant at best to put robotics teams on the same pedestal they put athletes, which is stupid but inevitable. What do teams that want to be sustainable do if they get hard limits on school time every week? What if they get 2 hour workdays, 5 days a week for example? That's the big question I don't have an answer for.
I think the best things we could do to try and help these teams with sustainability problems:
- Teach teams how to fundraise. Grants are giving a team a fish, teaching them how to fundraise effectively and around their district's policies will keep them going. (on a related note, anyone got any tips for my team?)
- Help teams get more mentorship, and stop starting a billion rookies unless those rookies all have good mentor support as well. There aren't many ways to really combat the second problem though, sometimes you start off GREAT and get unlucky.
- Get some information and pro tips out there to help teams work with their district, or better yet, have some of the better off teams write letters or talk to "uncooperative" districts about how great robotics is aand why they should be supportive.
Sorry for the long, rambling post.
I hope some of the content up there was useful to someone. I think I'm just really frustrated right now and this is my way of getting that out.