Why do team's fold?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by pwnageNick

Emphasis mine.

Just curious; did they explain what the logistical difficulties were in the district system that made them have to disband?

For some teams, districts are not the way to go. Part of the premise is that you're close to at least one of your events--that isn't always the case. For teams that would consider their "home" district as an overnight stay, you get an immediate logistical problem, potentially compounded by an administration problem.

Logistical problem: You have to house X students for 2 nights, a fair drive from home. Twice. This takes money.
Administration problem: See "logistical problem", apply school travel rules.

If the teams were already single-event teams, this could easily be enough to overstretch them. If they're overstretched like that, something's got to give--probably the team.


I personally know one team that folded, and why. When one teacher is running the entire team with minimal support from the school, eventually the team shuts down. (By "shuts down", I mean that it transitioned to FTC/VRC/FLL, all three as I recall. The teacher in question got more help eventually, though those three programs are a bit easier to handle.)

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by EricH

For some teams, districts are not the way to go. Part of the premise is that you're close to at least one of your events--that isn't always the case. For teams that would consider their "home" district as an overnight stay, you get an immediate logistical problem, potentially compounded by an administration problem.

Logistical problem: You have to house X students for 2 nights, a fair drive from home. Twice. This takes money.
Administration problem: See "logistical problem", apply school travel rules.

If the teams were already single-event teams, this could easily be enough to overstretch them. If they're overstretched like that, something's got to give--probably the team.


I personally know one team that folded, and why. When one teacher is running the entire team with minimal support from the school, eventually the team shuts down. (By "shuts down", I mean that it transitioned to FTC/VRC/FLL, all three as I recall. The teacher in question got more help eventually, though those three programs are a bit easier to handle.)

Not only is travel a prohibiting factor for some Eastern Washington teams, but missing the extra days of school required for 2-3+ events, instead of 1 was an issue.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Yep, this seems to be the most common case I've heard of too. Looking over my notes from last year's PNW registration, we lost 10 teams (Bear in mind that this was after the first year of districts).

Of those 10, one merged with another school, another started a different STEM program in place of FRC, at least two confirmed that they were losing their coach/head mentor, several others stated that districts were difficult for them logistically. If I recall, none of the 10 who dropped for the 2015 season were due strictly to financial difficulties.

I known that down here in Oregon, going into 2016 we have two teams that are folding due to the financial burden that is placed on them (so I here). These were teams that had not made it to DCMP so I have a hunch (this part is speculation ) that the new registration prices made it so they could not participate.

[David Brinza]

The voting thus far points to loss of mentor/teacher and funding issues as leading causes.

I didn't see lack of student motivation or parental engagement on the poll. Mentors/teachers sometimes struggle with burn-out, especially when students lose interest and parents don't support the effort to keep students committed to the program.

Mentors might leave a team suddenly due to change in jobs or life-events (getting married, having children). Teams should develop a succession plan for loss of mentors for those circumstances. however, it's tough for a mentor to step into a team where morale and motivation is low. This is an area where strong student leadership and commitment can help sustain teams when a mentor or teacher leaves.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

The voting thus far points to loss of mentor/teacher and funding issues as leading causes.

Mentors might leave a team suddenly due to change in jobs or life-events (getting married, having children).

For our Team 359, we have endured losing our main mentors and lead coordinator during our early years. We nearly almost folded as a result. Two of us are the remaining founders of the team and had to learn to readjust our roles in the program, while searching for more volunteers and support.
Those that have done FIRST heavily and successfully with the right mix of mentors, understand what it takes, which makes it even tougher to replace anyone. The best and most common examples of setting up contingency plans that I have personally seen involves former students becoming mentors.

As for having a life changing experience having children, that cannot be stressed enough!! There are days I tell myself its time to give it up....

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by waialua359

As for having a life changing experience having children, that cannot be stressed enough!! There are days I tell myself its time to give it up....

We all do.
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate your family from your real family. And sometimes it's quite easy.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

The voting thus far points to loss of mentor/teacher and funding issues as leading causes.

I didn't see lack of student motivation or parental engagement on the poll. Mentors/teachers sometimes struggle with burn-out, especially when students lose interest and parents don't support the effort to keep students committed to the program.

I dangle 10's of thousands of dollars in grants / scholarships in front of parents, that keeps most of them focused to do parent like stuff.

We only get about 3-4% of eligible students to be roboteers, there is a bigger untapped pool to go after.

[Christopher149]

There's a couple teams near us that folded that I have a semi-decent idea as to why.

2153 - team was run as a class so they only had about 4 hours per week to work, and a couple years ago lost major programming mentors from a company when their employer altered volunteer / paid time off rules. The team had been struggling for several years.

4363 - big part was the team was mentored mostly be the one shop teacher, and he burned out after the first year with the time commitment and no one came in to replace him.

As anecdote to other options on the poll, 857 and 2586 have both lost build space at least once and have been through financially difficult times and are still around.

Originally Posted by waialua359

Those that have done FIRST heavily and successfully with the right mix of mentors, understand what it takes, which makes it even tougher to replace anyone. The best and most common examples of setting up contingency plans that I have personally seen involves former students becoming mentors.

The last two lead mentors 857 has had have both been former 857 students (though the arrangement is interesting because they were also college students, and I think almost everyone previous was a former member of a different team).

[Zac Schofield]

In my opinion, student interest, supportive mentors, and school support are the three most important things to have in a team. Lots of great teams have dedicated students who want to well during competition season, along with mentors who can educate those students to hone their skills and teach new ones. School support is also important (especially for us, since I'm pretty sure they pay for our district registration). It was hard for us this year since we lost our shop in the high school, and had to setup in an unused room in the middle school.

[staplemonx]

Thanks for everyone's votes, comments and private messages. This was really helpful. We collected everything into a blog post and added some info we learned from Team 125 on risk management that we think could help a lot of teams.

Here is the post, http://team1389.com/why-do-frc-teams-fold/

[GeeTwo]

It's too late for the report (at least the initial cut), but there is at least one case in which an FRC team graduated/retired that involved none of the conditions described above. Many of you probably know that I'm speaking of 1717, d'Penguineers. The Dos Pueblos Engineering department decided to drop competition in FRC in order to pursue even more ambitious goals for their seniors. They didn't so much fold as raise the stakes beyond what the FRC table could support. Their last match was as semi-finalists on Carver at CMP 2015.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

It's too late for the report (at least the initial cut), but there is at least one case in which an FRC team graduated/retired that involved none of the conditions described above. Many of you probably know that I'm speaking of 1717, d'Penguineers. The Dos Pueblos Engineering department decided to drop competition in FRC in order to pursue even more ambitious goals for their seniors. They didn't so much fold as raise the stakes beyond what the FRC table could support. Their last match was as semi-finalists on Carver at CMP 2015.

Looking at videos of them they seem good but, I feel like unless your dominating a program you haven't reached its full potential. If they say won 3 world championship titles in a row moving onto better things would make more sense imo.

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Looking at videos of them they seem good but, I feel like unless your dominating a program you haven't reached its full potential. If they say won 3 world championship titles in a row moving onto better things would make more sense imo.

IIRC they are not competing because they don't feel FRC is scaleable for their needs.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by staplemonx

Thanks for everyone's votes, comments and private messages. This was really helpful. We collected everything into a blog post and added some info we learned from Team 125 on risk management that we think could help a lot of teams.

Here is the post, http://team1389.com/why-do-frc-teams-fold/

And just for reference, anyone else who wants to collect info for the 125 risk tool, just let me know so we don't have multiple teams at events collecting info. And I do ask you share data back so I can use it to help validate the model over the years.

I'm mobile right now but when I get home I'll post how that model was created for some background info.

EDIT

As promised:

This model was created after discussions with AllisonK and merging it with some of the work I have been doing for work (my work is focused around patient outcomes and learning health systems) I also spoke with Richard Sisk and Meredith Novak for some input based on their experiences as RDs. Most of the data was designed around things we could, given proper access to STIMs/VIMs and TBA compute automatically[1]. And the goal was to give RDs a tool they could use to direct resources to assist teams (time, money, mentors). It also gives teams a fairly easy method of self assessment.

I have a theory that certain categories are more heavily weighted than others, but, frankly, it's really hard to determine those without data.


[1] There are exceptions, the community knowledge is a bit harder to nail down, potentially could be detected based on RCA submissions (pass/fail) and the entire Communication section is really difficult to automate.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Looking at videos of them they [1717] seem good but, I feel like unless your dominating a program you haven't reached its full potential. If they say won 3 world championship titles in a row moving onto better things would make more sense imo.

Winning blue banners isn't the only measure of success in FRC. Banners just hang on the wall, but inspired, educated alumni change the world.