FIRST Five-Year Strategic Plan (2013-2017)

[lynca]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

In the program growth section the numbers seem pretty constant for FLL and FTC, but JFLL and FTC are supposed to grow by 6 and 3 times their current size!

FLL growth makes sense because they have a natural trend that's working well for the organization.

The growth factor for JFLL/FTC makes me cringe a bit .... FIRST needs to be careful to let growth happen organically instead of handing out money to schools. I have seen many teams started in FRC based on a multi-year attractive STEM grant without carefully vetting the teacher's commitment to FIRST.

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Also, in the Financials section, there were some very interesting numbers explaining how the money that goes to FIRST works out. I am actually kind of surprised by the budget numbers, some are actually lower than I predicted, but most surprisingly, I didn't actually think it was the most efficient 501c3 Charity in the US, but in actuality, overhead costs are very efficient as proven by this watchdog: http://www.charitynavigator.org/inde...ary&orgid=9402.

And when you compare those statistics to some popular charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/inde...ail&listid=148, looking pretty great! And this does not include all the teams that raise their own funds, meaning that in fact the organizational impact efficiency is probably a little bit better than the numbers show! (Assuming teams are using all monies raised by teams are used the "right way").

These numbers look good, I'm happy to see FIRST is taking care of their finances. Maybe one day we can actually see a reduction in the entry fee for FRC teams.