How do you find pre-rookie teams in your area?

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by akoscielski3

Really the question is, what are you looking for in a school or community group when asking them if they want to start a team? My team has never started another team...

This may be as good a place as any...

Starting new teams to mentor is the same as starting up a new team yourself, only once the "founding" work is done, you transition to a mentoring role rather than a leadership role.

I'm sure there are plenty of threads on starting new teams, but I'm a bit lazy and I will summarize my concept here...
1. START WELL AHEAD OF TIME (ie now would be about the latest I would start a 2013 FRC team). Not to say it can't be done later, but this gives you the best chance to lay good plans & groundwork.
2. Approach local schools and businesses to see if they would be interested.
2a. You will need to find a willing school, with at least a willing teacher, or find a way to do the Magnet (ie MOE) model and draw from many schools (this is harder to do if you arent leading the team yourself).
2b. Find a willing sponsor, ideally that can pass along at least a few mentors.
3. Pair these two up and get them talking, be prepared with slides that have an overview of FIRST and the schedule of the FIRST season. Present the benefits for each (ie what can FIRST do for you), and what the commitment levels are. Get at least a teacher/faculty representative committed, maybe see if they can pull in a few students to help the organization, and get some engineers/mentors/parents who can help the team get organized.
4. Once they have committed to forming a team, have them follow a structure like the info I have posted here:
http://penfieldrobotics.com/resources/rookies.php
Much of that is material I developed when founding 1511.

Your role as a mentor team is then to help them walk through the process of starting up, help them get organized, answer questions, provide resources, materials, advice. Help them along so its not all so overwhelming You may want to get a small group from your team together (ie a couple of mentors & a couple of students) that might be willing to "drop in" on that team to help them run their meetings, start their design, focus during build season, etc.

As for the What to Look for, to me commitment is the biggest thing. They can be nervous and unsure of themselves, as long as they are committed to giving it a shot. We've seen rookie teams founded by large grants that are just thrust at the school - saying "here is some money, find a teacher and some kids and go start a team". My guess is ~10% of those teams are remaining today. You want to start a team that has a chance of succeeding and the biggest measure of that is commitment. If you can get one teacher that is really excited, they can be an incredible base for recruiting students and getting the school on board. If you can get one or two engineers from a local company, they can be an incredible base for finding funding and recruiting more engineers to help out. But its finding people that can be committed that is the hard part. Often, you may have to give the pitch again and again - to the principal, the shop teachers, the board, the administration, etc etc... before you find the one or two teachers who are really gung-ho. Sometimes finding a student who knows the teachers well may even be a better "in" to knowing the school. They will know which teachers are there to get paid and which ones have more time for the kids and might be willing to start a new "club". It also helps to have either a really strong teacher or a really strong engineer (or both), who can really help lead the team. They will need your guidance, but someone who is organized and can communicate well will make a great team leader and can go a long way in helping the team succeed in their Rookie year. The weaker the leadership, the more the mentoring team will have to do, and the less likely the team will be to stand on its own/survive past the first year.

Hope that helps a bit!