Starting a Robotics Club/Team

[DeAnnaC]

Our group started with a local high-school, but the support was dropped after the first year, so the mentors at that time created a non-profit organization and we've been a stand-alone organization since then (2003). The board members and mentors (many are the same) are all volunteer - we have no paid staff.

We have mentors from all kinds of backgrounds, some have (had) children on the team, some of our mentors don't have any kids, they are just professionals in a discipline or have experience that we need. Our students come from 5 different counties, 9 different schools and we have 18 home-schooled students.

We are completely self-sustaining and do our own funding by writing grants and fund-raising projects that we do all year long.

We meet in donated space (basement of a strip mall) and the tools we have were purchased with grants or donated from families tied to the team. Besides the FRC team, we sponsor about 10 Jr FLL and 28 FLL teams each year so we keep students in the program and moving up as they age out of the other teams.

I would contact some local teams and make visits to them during their meetings to find out what they do, how they are organized, how they get their funding and sponsors.

Some teams may have team manuals, certification processes (like the Boy Scout badge program), team outline of job descriptions, etc, that they would be willing to share that may help a new group get organized.

DeAnna