downsizing

[Chris Nowak]

I think we charge the students like 300 or something like that...Im not too sure. This year we have to decide, if we reserve tickets ahead of time, who will be the one with the bill, as it is going to be a gamble (were only going to houston if we qualify). We have to decide whether the students will lose money or the sponsor if we dont qualify...

As far as the point of this thread, we might actually be better off because we are getting a new sponsor, Donnelly, and while they have committed to no financial amount, there are like 10 engineers were getting from them.

[Ian Mathew]

Well, at 292 we have been fortunate enough to be getting great deals on travel, and building the robot from our sponsor. We have also managed to get grants from the state, by completing workshops that we, the students are required to attend. Our school bought computers just before the state cut school budgets, which was also very lucky, though it'll hurt our school now. I don't know our full situation, though, but we are looking okay for this year in terms of money.

[Gadget470]

danlevin53 basically summed up the book i wrote a few posts up about 247's situation, way to read Dan, way to read. You'll hear this again on monday :-)

[DanLevin247]

My bad Gadget, I'm used to seing Gadget247 instead of Gadget470...oh well.


As for 247, it's been in a downward spiral for a long time. Students are faced with an incredible fundraising burden like Gadget said, I currently have 304 dollars in my travel acount, which means i will have to pay roughly 195 dollars by the middle of Janurary to bring my acount up to date...which is really hard on my family, we have to dip into the money my grandmother left us when she passed away just to pay for my travel. Most kids on the team don't have acess to this kind of money, and sadly, because they have yet to learn anything about "robotics" in class, they are in turn dropping the class all together because of their lack of desire to participate in a demanding after school schedule and burn a 1200 dollar hole in their pockets. Our team is also a class, if you haven't realized it already, and the class aspect of the team is sadly, all but gone. We have a great teacher who doubles as our coach, but the class must be veru hard to write cirriculum for.


As for sponsorship, 247 is on it's way out. I think that if we don't get sponsorship from additional compainies soon, 247 will cease to exist. I think that it would be wonderful if FIRST was able to recognize the financial prediciment of some teams, and make their best effort to turn sponsors their way. I mean, NO TEAM, even MOE and their loud sticks, deserves to go out of existance, right?

[D. Gregory]

At the moment 849 is dirt poor. We are waiting to hear from our School Board whether they will help us. We can pay the entry fee but thats about it.

[Gadget470]

2 things:

first off: sanddrag

You charge your team members to participate? I hope that only goes for their own travel costs.

That was in referance to 247's situation, I was not a mentor there so it wasn't my choice to charge for participation. The participation fee only applys to those whom wish to travel with the team. Also, the money is going towards each member's own travel costs... if it costs $1200 each that is, which I doubt. Close to $900 maybe, considering that one of the regionals we don't get a hotel or fly to, it's a 45 minute drive in the morning.
My rough estimates:
Hotel in Chicago area [3 nights / 3 people a room] $75 (25 per person, per night)
2-way ticket to Texas: $300-$350
Hotel in Texas [5 nights / 4 people in a room] $100 (20 per person, per night)

To me that adds up to be roughly $500 per person. The travel costs (to my knowledge) don't include food, which would be an additional less than $200 each.

Something seems awry, I hope I'm just missing a big peice.

secondly: danlevin247

I think that it would be wonderful if FIRST was able to recognize the financial prediciment of some teams, and make their best effort to turn sponsors their way.

FIRST itself is in a financial predicament, which is why some regionals are going to be "streamlined" to save money. The sponsors of FIRST do, in effect, sponsor teams. Example, SMC Pneumatics gives FIRST roughly $1.2M (raw value) in parts to go into kits, plus the cost of the shipment (According to a conversation with Dave Johnson of SMC). If they were to pick specific teams to sponsor it wouldn't be fair to the others. Given that there are just over 1000 teams participating in FIRST, that makes for $1,200 per team. I think that is a better deal than $5000 to one team and skimping on others. FIRST's major corparate sponsors aren't getting "name recognition" by sponsoring FIRST, yes they get their name all over the place, but the people that see it already know who they are.

Ok.. that stammered a bit, what I'm basically trying to say is that FIRST's sponsors are are already dropping a big load of money to help out all teams, it would be too hard to pick and choose who gets to be sponsored by FIRST's sponsors.

There are too many levels and needs by teams.. Financial, Material, Mechanical, Engineers.. the list goes on

[Mark Hamilton]

We Have felt the bite as well. Our Budget is severly reduced, our engineers can no longer spend as much time, and we have less time at our build site. However, those teams that still have sponsors at all should be thankful. Some teams that competed last year won't be back again due to lack of funding.

[Matt Attallah]

*Ouch*

My team is not really feeling anything. Last year was our worst year, i think. But this year, we are doing OK...

We have a fair amount of $ for the regionals, but we need to get more, a lot, for Nats...

[Stephen Kowski]

The real issue is not engineering problems, our sponsor is contributing more than ever this year. The issue is our travel costs the Nationals in Florida were nice and cheap now we are not in the best position for all of our team to go to Houston.