A FIRST Warning From VA

[tsaksa]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I disagree - once you have a local regional you can have a team for less than $10,000 a year

for a business that is not a lot of money. Im sure there are far more businesses in any given area than there are highschools.

If not then you really NEED FIRST in your area! :^)

Actually $10,000 is a lot of money. Quite a lot of money. Our team has spent many long hard months doing car washes, light bulb sales at a variety of venues, other fund raising events, restaurant fund raisers, etc. We have also had the students out tracking down and following up on just about any source for donations, grants, etc. The students and adult volunteers are worn out worn out from all the fund raising and yet at this point we only have approximately $5000 raised for the year. That is enough for registration at one event, but nothing else. No spare parts, no supplies, no tools, no extras of any kind.

Our fund raising efforts are ongoing, but at this point we will probably not be working with much more. There was a time when we got some financial support from the school district, and that made things easier. But at this point we are lucky to have our school supply some space for meetings. We also used to get more cooperate sponsorship, but most local companies have dropped all support and it takes a lot of work to raise even $5000 if most of your corporate donations are less than $100. I wish we were a town with have a JC Penny or other company that supports FIRST, but for now we need to just chase as many small donations as we can. The economy is tight and in some areas there is just not a lot of money available.

Still, I would hate to see our team decide to merge with another local high school. I know if that happened many of the students would just have no way of making it to meetings on a regular basis and would drop out of the program. I know there are companies that really understand FIRST and are willing to make a significant contribution. There are also locations where fund raising events can solicit a more significant response. But please do not assume these opportunities exist for most of the teams out there.

[North Sailor]

This thread raises some very key points.

To give some level of summary, the critical components which contribute to the FIRST experience include:

1. Students
2. Sponsors
3. Mentors

I think we can all agree that we would like to see as many students have the opportunity available to them to participate in a FIRST program in their community. Considering that agreement, students are not the limiting factor towards growth for FIRST.

Sponsorship has become significantly harder to secure for many teams, both in rural, suburban, and urban areas. Companies have cut back, though many do still maintain a high level of commitment to the FIRST program and the services it offers. It is veyr true that with a local regional it can be possible to build and compete with a simple robot for around $10,000. This sum of money, though not small, is significantly smaller than the many teams whose annual opperating budgets exceed $40,000. Ultimately from the discussion on money, we can conclude that though operating at a higher budget is becoming more difficult, we seem to somehow survive by cutting back on projects, and sharing resources within our areas.

The fundamental limiting factor that I wish to raise on the subject of new teams and the growth of FIRST in geographic areas which are already dense with team participation is the topic of mentorship. Industry mentors are critical to the success of a team, and the inspiration of students. It isnt that our teachers are bad, but they need help and often times do not have the hands-on engineering experience to lead the design and construction of an FRC robot. Mentors are absolutely critical and I think if you talked to any FIRST team mentor they will tell you just how much time they dedicate to the program (whether sponsored by work or not). The problem with so many new teams is that there are not enough active mentors able to support them.

This sentiment is shared with first hand experience. I am a mentor for ILITE Robotics (1885) and Herndon High School Robotics (116) in Northern VA. As has already been said, yes we are much better off in the DC area than other areas with FIRST due to the high number of engineering companies and government contracting ($$) BUT this year resources have become more tight and the persistance of several local teams at starting new rookie teams as opposed to opening their team to numerous high schools has split valuable sponsorship and spread the critical mentorship thin.

Gary Dillard said it perfectly:

Splitting into 2 teams to get "credit" for growth is the wrong type of growth, as would creating a rookie team at the new school instead of including them with us.

If a team is looking to promote growth for FIRST, I would recommend looking towards setting up ladder programs such as FLL and FTC and opening your teams doors to students in your entire community. FLL and FTC are WAY cheaper, and operate with systems which are much easier for non-engineering parents to become involved.

PLEASE: Heed this warning, and understand good mentors are even harder to find than sponsors. (So go thank your mentors... I know I do every day)

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by North Sailor

...and opening your teams doors to students in your entire community...

I agree with many of the comments you made, however, this statement above is much harder to do than you may think.

Most of the teams in my local area, Richmond VA, are based out of local high schools. These schools have rules regarding who may participate in their extracurricular activities. Students from different schools in the same county may not be able to participate. To bring Joe Student into your school for robotics would be troubling to many school administrators.

[Lil' Lavery]

How does this thread keep getting bumped?

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

How does this thread keep getting bumped?

By fluke, and then by re-analysis. I think what KelliV did a good follow-up to the warning from a few years ago. With that said, I wonder if the warning has any merit -- are the teams no longer registered to due (natural) attrition or primarily due to funding issues caused by donors being spread too thin?

[mrmummert]

Hello...

I'm a mentor for team 1610 which started in 2005 and was the team near
team 616. It is true that to a extent we competed for funding with 616, but
not directly and during the first couple of years we looked for different sponsors than what 616 had. We had tried to merge both 616 and 1610 together in 2006, but school board politics played a part and what happened was team 616 folded and 1610 kept going, but it wasn't easy. Three former team members joined 1610 after 616 folded. A mentor for 616 in 2004 became a mentor for 1610 in 2005 mainly because his son went to team 1610's high school. The Big loss was that we lost 616, the mentors that worked with that team (none of the mentors from 616 came to 1610 after 2006) and the experiance that team 616's robotics program could have given to its high school and community.

I've seen both new teams start up and other ones drop out in the Virginia area. Mainly based on teams that came to the Virginia regional and allowing
for the newer DC regional and NC regional teams i have seen some teams drop out. 616 will probably never be back . I have yet to see team 388 register this year. 165 from Maryland who often came to the Virginia regional is gone. So is team 2108 from North Carolina that used to come to Virginia.
(I don't think they existed after 2010) and there are others.

You'll notice that the Virginia regional used to be called the Nasa/VCU regional. While Nasa played a huge part in that regional, i don't think its as big a part as it had been. Also one year BAE Systems was a co sponsor and they withdrew their sponsorship of the Virginia regional after that year.
(in all fairness BAE has cut back on some of its sponsorship and not just in Virginia) Having many teams close to one another can be a good or bad thing
depending on the given circumstances. In some areas of the country it works.
In other places it doesn't. That was part of the reason we(1610) tried to merge with 616. We have been lucky hand have been able to keep going.
(we won the regional in 2006, but almost folded in 2009) Community support
can almost be as important as sponsorship and not something to be overlooked.

[PayneTrain]

If you pay attention to the overall progress of FRC and Virginia FIRST, I think most would come to the conclusion that certain parts of the state are not growing to expectation.

Of red teams on that list, I believe almost all of those teams have unofficially folded into other teams (I believe JRHS and Clover Hill fold into 1541 as well as other high schools). Outside of team numbers, the state on the whole gained 5 rookies but netted -1 teams for the 2012 season, which is disappointing. Event OPR is significantly down and to put it bluntly, teams visiting VAR from outside the state really put the hurt on teams in-state. If I or someone else knew of a magic bullet to fix this problem, I'm certain it would have been solved.

Virginia, specifically central Virginia, has been a big FIRST concentration for over a decade, but we do not see an ideal distribution of team quality (in my opinion). We are just as old as the midwest, northeast, Greater Toronto, deep south, and Pacific areas but have had difficulty establishing a "marquee team." I guess I would be giving it to 1086 or 1885, but if criteria for a marquee team was CMP win, we would not have any.

Some people will not publicly attest to this, but there is a political climate in some parts of Virginia FIRST that may be a hindrance to this development. It may be the removal and relocation of the NASA sponsorship from VAR to DCR and NCR. You could credit companies that are not heavily involved sponsors like GM or IFI, but I don't think that's fair to great area sponsors like DuPont and Flexicell simply because GM is a megacorp and IFI is fine-tuned to sponsor this kind of stuff. It could be a collection of very inflexible administrators and teachers. Maybe we aren't properly developing in FLL and FTC, but I doubt that is the case. Maybe teams in the area operate on too much of an island. It could be a collection of all of these things.

I don't know if changes coming to the organization in 2014 will either help or hurt teams, but I certainly hope they help. I personally ensured my team would have funds available in case of major sponsor drops, but I know a lot of teams don't have that luxury. Sometimes I wish I was at home so I could help now, but I'm away in college so I can help more later. :/