Does your team charge a fee to join?

[cjl2625]

On 2067, every student has to pay $75 each year.
I don't know what it goes towards, but it includes the cost of a team shirt.

Students also pay for events where we need to stay in a hotel/pay for transportation.
For the district championship, I think it was something like $200.
For St. Louis, it was $800.

[ElvisMom]

Winnovation does not charge a membership fee. As a school supported activity, students are required to pay the extracurricular fee ($75, I think). We also ask each family to raise a minimum of $200 by participating in team fundraisers, soliciting sponsors, or writing a check. There are ample opportunities to raise these funds through team activities.

Team funds typically pay for one team shirt, transportation and rooming for in-season competition, provided students meet their academic requirements, participation (hours) requirement, and fundraising requirement. Students cover their food at competition. Off-season events cost is distributed among participants (e.g, hotel room, transportation).

[Libby K]

1923 does charge a fee for the FRC team.

$200 gets you safety glasses, a t-shirt, a polo, and the ability to qualify for travel with us.

In order to qualify for travel, students must attend a certain percentage of meetings (more meetings for leaders than other students). They must also attend our pre-season and our pre-event workshops on things like scouting, team history, etc - all led by student leaders, as well as sign a very thorough student & parent handbook. Our parents are also required to give time chaperoning our build space (not on school property) as well as money and/or food at least one time during the build season. The student and parent sign off on this when they pay their dues.

Sadly, with our multi-event travel costs we occasionally do need them to pitch in on travel cost. (The downside of inconveniently-placed-for-us districts).

So it ends up being more than $200 if we can't get the funds raised to travel -- but for our kids, that's all the more incentive to go get us some new sponsors each year. The parents being required to come to meetings and spend time with us increases their engagement with the program as well, which has brought us some really awesome support.

Hope that helps!

[mrnoble]

1339 recently added a $20 fee to pay for a t-shirt. Students who intend to participate in competitions, travel, and/or earn a letter are expected to raise $300 (through whatever means).

[sanddrag]

In this thread, I'm a little bit surprised by the number of teams that have such requirements which seem to (perhaps not deliberately) exclude less fortunate students. What a luxury it must be (for the teams) to be able to charge a fee for participation, but what an unfortunate circumstance it would be for that really bright kid who does not come from a family of wealth, and whose family does not have $200 or even $20 to spend for him or her to join.

Perhaps things are just different outside of California...

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Our school's development office is quite paranoid about us talking to potential donors that they also have their eye on (which seems to comprise most people/businesses with money in Oregon), so we're pretty limited in how we can fundraise. Because of this, we need to charge $350 to compete in the spring season, and students also need to cover their portion of travel costs. However, if this is a hardship, financial aid is available for the membership fee and travel costs, and the school kicks in quite a bit if we make it to St. Louis.

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

In this thread, I'm a little bit surprised by the number of teams that have such requirements which seem to (perhaps not deliberately) exclude less fortunate students. What a luxury it must be (for the teams) to be able to charge a fee for participation, but what an unfortunate circumstance it would be for that really bright kid who does not come from a family of wealth, and whose family does not have $200 or even $20 to spend for him or her to join.

Perhaps things are just different outside of California...

There's always more to the story. Our school has a foundation that pays for everything from books and AP test fees to project and travel costs for students that lack means; students can contract to work at a rate of $10/hr for the school (usually helping teachers out in the classroom), with the "money" coming in the form of paid fees. I also have years of experience that tell me kids treat free stuff with less respect than things in which they have invested, so regardless of the means each student has, it's good for them to have some literal buy in, I think. And I have had students on my team who ranged from homeless to wealthy.

[MrBasse]

We have never charged a fee to be on the team. Students must set a goal for fundraising and if they meet that goal they get their shirts for free. If the whole team meets the goal set by mentors then travel is paid for as far as we can. Last year we were able to pay for half of everyones hotel costs as well as mileage for parents that provided rides.

Our typical goal is $500 per student, but we have never really had more than 15 active members when build season rolls around. But if we get that plus whatever our mentors beg and borrow, we typically do okay.

[Taylor]

If a student wishes to travel with the team to official FIRST events, he/she must raise at least $250 in sponsorships. While we encourage these sponsorships to be with area businesses, on occasion they're financed by the families or the students themselves.
We also work with the students throughout the year, training them on proper tactics, partner rookies with veteran students, and utilize the Fundraising Toolkit.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

In this thread, I'm a little bit surprised by the number of teams that have such requirements which seem to (perhaps not deliberately) exclude less fortunate students. What a luxury it must be (for the teams) to be able to charge a fee for participation, but what an unfortunate circumstance it would be for that really bright kid who does not come from a family of wealth, and whose family does not have $200 or even $20 to spend for him or her to join.

Perhaps things are just different outside of California...

I think others have said this earlier in the thread, but our experience echoes the same: If there is a kid who wants to join our team but cannot, for some reason, pay the money - we work it out. We would never, ever, deny a student for their inability to pay if they truly want to be there. As an example, in our case, maybe the student creates the equivalent of the fee by putting in more outreach hours than the handbook requires or by bringing in a new sponsor.

But with almost 200 students clamoring to join our program, the fee is (1) a way to help cover our district travel and (2) a way of weeding out the kids who just want it on their resume but don't actually want to engage with the program.

[Koko Ed]

The only fee our team charges is for your heart and soul. No refunds.

[GarrettF2395]

As a primarily homeschool team, we charge a participation fee of $50 per family. This encourages siblings to participate without additional cost, which we've found to be a decent recruiting method.
This fee doesn't cover required student expenses like travel or T-shirt cost.

We had discussed moving to a $250 fee, but none of our leadership team had time this summer to schedule and attend fundraisers to help our students raise the money, which was a necessity in my opinion.

So we'll work on it for next season.

[tickspe15]

We charge a small fee at the beginning of the year to cover uniform&safety glasses costs for each student. Students pay in full all competitions, most of which are within driving distance under the district system. This year a student that wanted to attend all 8 of our competitions(including 3 off-seasons) would have had to pay about $2,000 out of pocket. We also seek additional sponsorship to help offset transportation costs, this year our district paid for the bus to the district championship and hotels in St.Louis.

[who716]

our team Does not charge a fee, but we have requirement for each student raising a curtain amount of money. Rookie members have to raise 100, and veteran members have to raise 300. this money includes any public fundraising event, for example a tag sale so the money we make at the tag sale is divided up among all the student who helped out. if a person does not raise the required amount, then if we become a little short on funds, towards the end of the season they may be required to pay for there own hotel room.

[TedG]

Originally Posted by ElvisMom

Winnovation does not charge a membership fee. As a school supported activity, students are required to pay the extracurricular fee ($75, I think). We also ask each family to raise a minimum of $200 by participating in team fundraisers, soliciting sponsors, or writing a check. There are ample opportunities to raise these funds through team activities.

Team funds typically pay for one team shirt, transportation and rooming for in-season competition, provided students meet their academic requirements, participation (hours) requirement, and fundraising requirement. Students cover their food at competition. Off-season events cost is distributed among participants (e.g, hotel room, transportation).

Similarly..
When I ran the team, and even before that, we/they charged an "entry fee" to help offset team costs and to show member commitment. It started out at 60.00 but it went up to 75.00.

That as well as an expected amount of fundraising effort to be able to travel to competitions. We would remind the offenders that they haven't "earned" enough money and gave them (and everyone else) extra opportunities to earn money. Sometimes, they would simply have to "write a check" to be able to go to competition, to be fair to everyone else who did all their fundraising. We would have a deadline of December so we could confirm hotels and other travel arrangements.

I suspect that is how the current Advisors' are continuing to do it, very effective.