Workaround for Non-local Transportation of Robots to Competitions

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Explain this one to me. What are they not accepting a PO for?

The last couple of years, the State of Hawaii has a compliance vendor form that every entity we do business with be in compliance before a Purchase Order can be made in excess of $2500.00.
FIRST responsed by saying that they are a non-profit and that it didnt apply to them.
Our State procurement office noted that FIRST is not an exception and that they must do the paperwork in order to be registered.

I've done thousands, and I mean thousands of PO's over the last 20 years.
Part of my job requires doing the ordering for programs within our school and in many cases for our entire complex.

This is the 1st time I ever heard of an entity refusing to do it.

In response, our Friends of Hawaii Robotics 501c3 has offered to help by allowing us to make a PO to them, and then they would make the payment to FIRST for us.
No problem right? OK, but its been a paperwork nightmare for me and trying to help other public schools in our State pay the reg fees also.
I can only speak about Hawaii public schools doing FRC.
The registration fee is by far the biggest hurdle in doing FIRST. When the schools acquire funding to pay for registration fee, they need to be able to spend it. I know of several schools that dealt with it last year, and in the end, ended up using hard earned "cash" money to pay for it, while losing the allocated school funding to cover the reg costs. One of the schools outright didnt participate in FIRST during the 2013 season and are now coming back this season.
We never had the issue last year, because I got a University of Hawaii grant which covered all of my reg fees as well as donated funds. UH has a P-card (credit card) that allows them to charge and pay for the registration costs.