White House Petition for FIRST Funding

[wnewton00]

As many people have stated, the best thing about this is the potential to get people taking about FIRST, people who haven't heard of it before, possible future mentors & coaches. We have a new mentor for 1086 this year who had not heard of the program until his coworker's daughter joined our team and she told him about it.
I also coach FLL & previously Jr.FLL, which I did not do until my daughter joined 1086 and then through that exposure, my 7 year old son DEMANDED to participate as well. So I, who had not heard of FIRST until then, started a team.
Getting people to talk about it is how we will find all the resources we need to support all the children who could benefit and thrive in this program.
The greatest thing I think would be when I do not have to explain what FIRST is to my son's new teacher each year or the parents of the kids who hear about it and want to join or my coworkers.
We all know what someone refers to when they say their kid is in Little League, First should be at least as well recognized.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by IKE

I had been interested in an idea similar to this. I called it:

"Mentor Match".

If your program was an approved Mentorship Program, then mentors could apply for a Federal Match when filing for their taxes. The match would be an exemption that would be the equivalent of up to the minimum wage value x 200 Hrs. maximum. For instance, if you make $20/hour of $40K/year, your federal income tax rate is probably on the order of 10%. 200 hours = $4,000 deduction which would in turn be paid to your charity to the tune of $400. Assuming a minimum wage of $7/hr, then the cap would be $1,400. This would be the approximate deduction for someone making $100k/year or more (At $100K your income tax rate is around 14%, 200 hours at $50/hr = $10,000 * 14%= $1,400).

My thought was to keep it fairly general in the sense of "Mentorship Programs" so that programs like Big Brother Big Sisters, Scouts, 4-H, .... Might be able to get some additional benefit from the hours a Mentor provides.

+1 for this idea. Virginia has a tax deduction for individuals who volunteer on a company's behalf, and the companies get to deduct that person's hourly rate up to a certain amount (if I read the tax law correctly...). It really helps small businesses out who also support their community. I had plenty of people tell me "yea, you can do it" -- except an individual cannot deduct from their own personal taxes >facepalm<.

I'd say that it needs to be capped though (to reduce abuse & address fiscal issues), and the audit trail needs to be standardized. I know I put in 500-700 hours a year into overall mentorship activities, and at my hourly rate that would be quite a chunk of change in deductions as well as quite a nightmare to track/audit/verify.

It'd give incentives to people who mentor. That is, IMO, the biggest hurdle to FRC team sustainability. Individual team funding will come with that, eventually.

[CobolWhisperer]

Originally Posted by IKE

"Mentor Match"

How much do I love that idea! Not only would organizations get a second benefit from their volunteers' hours, but it could very well drive new volunteerism as well. That's a petition I could sign.

[LH Machinist]

I'm all for spreading the word of FIRST, it's a great method of advancing STEM in our school systems. IMHO the fastest way to spread the FIRST programs is through an existing partnership...GOOGLE. I've been quite dumbfounded seeing and hearing what GOOGLE does for FIRST and then championships come and go without a robotic mention on their homepage.

A petition to have FIRST highlighted during championships on GOOGLEs homepage would be awesome.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by LH Machinist

I'm all for spreading the word of FIRST, it's a great method of advancing STEM in our school systems. IMHO the fastest way to spread the FIRST programs is through an existing partnership...GOOGLE. I've been quite dumbfounded seeing and hearing what GOOGLE does for FIRST and then championships come and go without a robotic mention on their homepage.

A petition to have FIRST highlighted during championships on GOOGLEs homepage would be awesome.

Totally reminds me of this effort

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...80&postcount=1