pic: Growth of FIRST in Michigan

[Jim Zondag]

Joe,
Thanks for sharing my graph to all.
The key to the growth of FIRST hinges on 2 things.
1. Reducing participation costs
2. Increasing Return on Investment.

When we recreated the District System 8 years ago, these were our objectives and these have never changed.
The growth that that you see is a direct product of accomplishing these two goals. We are not done, we are just getting started.
We work to reduce event and operating costs wherever possible.
We use the money we save to help fund initiation costs for new teams and sustainability grants for existing teams.
We have worked with our state government to secure over $7Million in grants.
Many teams in our state play their entire season without ever paying any registration fees.
We have proven beyond any doubt that reducing costs will dramatically increase growth in FRC.
However, our cost reductions are artificial. We are offsetting the high cost of FIRST's enrollment fees with government money. In the grand scheme of things this is not sustainable. If administrations change, if the economy shifts, these grants may go away.

So the real question is: If FIRST really wants growth, as Dean repeatedly says they do, and they have real proof of what cost reduction can do to fuel growth, then why do they not ACTUALLY reduce program enrollment costs?
After 25years, and 100X growth in scale, there is still no price break from HQ.

We at FiM operate on a thin operating budget.
Our total operating costs are less than $1000/team/year.
FIRSTs costs are about 10 times this much, despite the fact that a significant portion of the league are now in Districts and these events are not financed by FIRST anymore.

If we ever want Robotics to be a sport in its own right, program enrollment costs must come down. Other leagues understand this. FIRST still apparently does not.

"It is not the idea......It's the execution."