Is business too overlooked by FIRST?

[Daskov]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

2) A new FIRST teams long term sustainability is not completely up to the students on the team, on successful (surviving/sustainable) teams, this is mostly a mentor driven initiative. This is not to say there are not exceptions, but usually someone needs to be around for more than a few years to keep the team going.

I would have to disagree. Coming from a heavily student run team, it is up to the students to make the team sustainable. Mentors are never the ones (at least in my experiences) creating new initiatives to undertake, contacting and meeting with new sponsors, or creating documents to help future donorship/sponsorship leads keep track of the past, present, and future team finances. On all teams I have encountered, it is a completely student run section of the team. Not to say that mentors don't help out; if a student has questions or concerns, that is who they turn to.