Improvements for FIRST: first a gripe, then a suggestion

[NLake]

Originally Posted by asid61

FIRST doesn't have a pot of gold tucked away somewhere. That's why new teams don't get tons of money.

I understand that FIRST may not be rolling in dough, serving by-and-large as a delivery vehicle for the various games that fall under its aegis. But my feelings still are/were (before I learned about the community mentor thing) that it should be doing a lot more to match teams with mentorship and resources, even if it is not, itself, the source of all this wealth.

Originally Posted by asid61

It's unfortunately up to them to seek help from other more experienced teams on how to get sponsors. It's just life.

My rejoinder, which is not aimed at you, asid61, but at the community (or society at large), is: why is that? Our team received an enormous amount of help from our mentor last year, and especially from the other established team in our city (Team 4159, CardinalBotics), which was invaluable, and without which we wouldn't have been able to survive. I feel, however, that the mentorship aspect, of taking younger teams under your wing and aiding them, would for the most part remain intact, even if a rookie team's attendance at meets was monetarily guaranteed. In fact, I feel like eliminating the constantly looming specter of an empty treasury would help many teams to do better in competition.

Have there ever been studies on the survival rates for teams going into their second (and third, and fourth, and seventh) years?