Advice needed!

[Clem1640]

Dear Kevin,

We went through a similar crisis a few years ago. Sounds like you've got three key problems with student retention, mentor retention and funding.

I agree with the responses above that to retain students, you need the program to be fun. A also think it needs to be rewarding to the students and to provide a sense that they've accomplished something worthwhile and also learned something valuable. Probably the most valuable things your students learn have nothing to do with engineering or robots, but with how to work as a team and to communicate clearly and effectively.

When I ended up leading 1640, I really had no idea where mentors came from. Parent volunteers are a great start here, particularly those parents having technology backgrounds. Of course, with parent mentors you need to be prepared for their departure with the graduation (or departure otherwise) of their children. If all of your mentors are parent mentors, continuity becomes a challenge. Over 2/3rds of 1640's mentors are non-parents (of 1640 students). To recruit non-parent mentors, you need to make it easy for them to find you (because by-in-large you cannot find them). This means "advertising", but in the community sense and not generally in the corporate sense. To retain non-parent mentors, they need to understand that they are doing something worthwhile and also need to become real stakeholders in the team. In 1640, these mentors by-in-large create and maintain the culture. They also need to have fun.

For fundraising (excluding the companies which have specific programs for FIRST grants), we find contacts in local technology companies and make a rational case for FIRST sponsorship. This doesn't work in every case, but it works often enough to keep us in robot parts and tools.

We also run fundraising events. Some restaurants (such as Applebees) are open to things like pancake breakfast fundraisers. We also host an FLL scrimmage.

Good luck.