How to deal with lack of participation

[xXhunter47Xx]

Our team gained many new members over the Summer and Fall season, something us senior students were excited about. Everyone was bright eyed and full of amazement as we explained what we did and what we will do, and we thought that we finally grew from our team of 6 then juniors to a group of 20 students essentially overnight.

However, that was not the case.

Before build season, we said many times that we will spend many hours in the classroom that we operate out of, and that the team requires the utmost dedication. This immediately scared some students away, but that wasn't an issue because we still had a lot of students interested. These students claimed they would be committed to the team.

The week before build season we lose a handful of students because of sports. That's not a big issue, because that was a prior commitment made before they joined robotics and was understandable.

As build season started, we were a little disappointed that we didn't have as many students as we started with, but that was not the biggest issue. The new members who were dedicated from the start showed up frequently and stayed for the majority of the meeting. They contributed to design ideas and potential strategy.

Two weeks later, student attendance starts dropping. This was when the heavy labor started. Those who were interested in programming stopped showing up regularly, and didn't really like the idea of robotics anymore even though they haven't even started and those who were interested in building left at 4 (school gets out at 2:19 and the meetings go to 9, we allotted a 1 and a half hour time to finish homework so you do the math).

This isn't to say that they lost interest, because when the robot was almost complete attendance started rising again. They wanted to know what the robot did and how we built it, which they shouldn't even need to ask if they had shown up for the past couple meetings.

Obviously, this is an extracurricular activity. There is no obligation to show up but when you say you are dedicated we expected them to uphold that promise and show up when asked. It's understandable when you're sick or that you can't come in for one or two days, but when you go missing for weeks only to come back when all the labor's done it's not cool.

The worst is that the majority of the people actually showing up to every meeting and contributing will be graduating this year, leaving the fate of the team in the hands of flakes (some offense may or may not be intended).

With that being said how does your team deal with lack of participation? What incentives/motivations do you give to new members to stay and actually work on the robot?