Improvements for FIRST: first a gripe, then a suggestion

Eric pretty much summed it up - Teri Benart, our NorCal senior mentor, is a fantastic person who can definitely help you with your problems.

While I personally don't have any more advice requiring gaining monetary sponsors, I do have lots of experience on building competitive robots on a tight budget, and while I no longer live in San Jose I am well informed on FIRST in the Silicon Valley, so feel free to message me if you ever need help designing a robot for a low resource team, or if you want to know nearby teams you can contact for help. I've got tons of friends on experienced FRC teams in the bay area who would be more than happy to personally help you with fundraising and the build season, and I'd love to introduce you and your team to them if you're interested.

Edit: Regarding your note about the difficulty of newer teams staying alive - it is a well known issue that FIRST (especially FIRST in California, I've found) has a strong push for the development of new teams, when often times some areas cannot even support the teams they already have. This leaves second to third year teams helpless as the new rookies get all the attention from FIRST. The best I can say is that it will be a lot better when California moves to the district system (and I hear that's real soon).