Raise participation on a small team

[Ari423]

Thanks for your responses. We have tried launching stuff into crowds (we don't have a t-shirt cannon but we did launch frisbees with gift cards taped on using the robot from 2 years ago).

We do have a FLL team at our middle school (also chronically underfunded and without a strong student base). Despite sending members to help the middle school team (myself being one), we are only seeing maybe one or two students come in (and then we still have to fight to keep them). Our middle school is suffering from mold problems, so they are currently split into 3 different locations, making demos that much harder to pull off (besides having to miss school). We have tried to bring the robot to middle (and even elementary) school fun/science days, but we have been met with FIRST or the school district's red tape.

We try to go around to as many physics classes as we can (because kids in physics tend to like STEM more than average). We don't have the manpower to go around to every science class, but having science teachers talk about joining the team sounds like a good idea.

Despite being extremely popular (not), not having many members now means we don't have many friends to pull in. That being said, friends were our biggest source of members this year, bringing in 2 seniors. Thanks for all of your ideas, still open to more!