Does your team charge a fee to join?

[Shrub]

3883 does not have a fee per say, but it is ~100??? (I don't remember too well) per student to attend the DoubleDECCer due to transportation and hotels, but there is no transportation fee for our second regional due to mainly parents driving students to the U and back. Our shirts and sweaters are also paid for by students, but if one is on free/reduced lunch it can be lowered or waived.

[pyroslev]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

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

You forgot sanity.

[Bochek]

We have a $350 fee per student to cover Shirts, Hotels and Travel costs. There are provisions in place for families that can not afford the fee.

[GKrotkov]

How appropriate that this thread pops up, I was came from a Dawgma meeting where we discussed the implementation of these fees for the first time. We're intending them to about ~20$, taken at the beginning of (or around then) build season. The delay until build season is giving people a chance to see if they actually want to commit to our team, also, it's low enough that people shouldn't have too much of a problem paying the fee. We haven't discussed ways to mitigate the fee, but now that I'm reading this thread, I'll have to bring this up next meeting. Perhaps we can waive the fee if you've gotten fundraising or some sort of sponsorship?

Thanks, Chief Delphi!

[SoulianPride]

Originally Posted by mman1506

Our team is debating adding a small fee (~$50) to join our team due to a larger number of students (75~) than previous year to cover the additional cost of transportation. Traditionally plans of adding a fee have been shot down due to being located in a public school with a wide range of income levels.

My team does charge a fee, but not money. We all are required to get 30 service hours and we pay for our own hotel rooms which when split between 4-5 students makes it somewhat cheap.

[The_ShamWOW88]

Our school prevents charging any type of fee to the students. We've never intended to charge them anything nor will we. Besides, we've been hurting for new student involvement for a few years now so we don't want anything that would turn them away.

It definitely makes sense for teams that register for 3+ events a year and attends Nationals annually but for smaller teams that have been struggling for awhile, we can't afford to lose team membership.

[The_ShamWOW88]

Originally Posted by The_ShamWOW88

Our school prevents charging any type of fee to the students. We've never intended to charge them anything nor will we. Besides, we've been hurting for new student involvement for a few years now so we don't want anything that would turn them away.

It definitely makes sense for teams that register for 3+ events a year and attends Nationals annually but for smaller teams that have been struggling for awhile, we can't afford to lose team membership.

World Championships....not Nationals

[USAFRoboticsNut]

our team doesn't charge any fee but does require students to attend a certain amount of both community and competition events or else they get a temporary suspension from the team. if they refuse to participate after that then they are asked to leave the team.

[itzaklevi]

When we started out, we charged ~$75 plus travel costs because we didn't have a lot of sponsors. Since then, we have unfortunately had to up costs to $175 plus travel. We have actually gained sponsors since then, but our school cut all of our funding, so now the team have to pay for registration and competition fees in addition to the school's pay-to-play fee of $100. It really bothers me that we have to give the school around $4000 just to exist when they do absolutely nothing for us - our coach doesn't even get a stipend. It really sucks.

[thegnat05]

All FIRST teams in our school district charge a fee. Our FRC and FTC teams charge a fee of $225 per student and FLL teams are somewhere around $100. This is because our FTC and FLL teams generally don't have sponsors and are funded completely by their entrance fee. Our FRC teams have very generous sponsors but having that entrance fee helps a lot with budgeting and controlling funding.

All of our FIRST programs are run through the community programing, we call it Community Ed. They are the same people that run things like Club Care after school and Drivers Ed so some of that money goes directly to Community Ed.

[SenorZ]

Team 4276 is asking students to meet a $150 funding goal. Of course, as a California public school "club" we cannot force any student to pay, and we cannot exclude anyone based on financial reasons.

Students may meet this funding goal by

1. Parent Donation
2. Selling LED bulbs ($7 per bulb credit) or school discount cards ($5 per card)
3. Participate in team fundraiser events (restaurant nights, car washes, etc.)

If a student does not do any of the three above, they do not receive a team shirt for free. Otherwise they may still be a full team member and attend competitions, as long as they do their work.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Our first year (2013) we kept the fee low at $50 so that we did not scare away any potential members. We had a strong group of 27 students. Last year we set our entry fee at $100 and we had even more members (34).

This year we are not looking at increasing the fees - however we are looking at a more complex system of fundraising and fees. I will not share it here as I don't want my team knowing exactly what it is. However, it will not raise the fees for our committed members - only those that are 'less; committed.

[mwilbur]

Our team charges students $100 team dues each year, payable by the beginning of November. The dues cover the cost of the team uniform -- 3 T-shirts and our rally towel -- and the field trip costs for the Virginia Regional, which we consider to be our "home" regional. The team dues started during the first few years of our team and were instituted because we had students that would come all fall, go through the team-provided training and work their way onto one of the subteams, then disappear in January. This put the team in a bad position because we didn't necessarily have the proper skill mix. The dues were instituted so that the students and their families became more invested in the team (dues are non-refundable if they drop out) so that we could minimize the number of team members who suddenly disappeared. This seemed to work well for us, as the number of students dropping out dropped sharply after the dues were required. Over the last few years we have had much less of a problem with drop outs than in the early going, but the dues have persisted because it helps with an early infusion of cash into the accounts.

I will stress that our team is big on "inclusiveness, not exclusiveness," so students unable to pay due to family financial hardship are routinely provided a "scholarship" by the team to cover costs.

[asid61]

We cannot charge a fee, but we do encourage people to pay $135 to cover the cost of competition, shirts, etc. Hotel rooms are paid for by groups of students rooming together. If somebody can't pay, they are still full members of the team. We are in a pretty affluent area, so the costs are usually not a problem.
We have 50+ spare shirts from years past, so if somebody can't afford the cost or don't pay, they can probably pick one up during build season for free (just ask and come occasionally).

We spend a lot of money each year, and even with grants we get around 30% of our cash from parents.