Experience promoting districts in Minnesota

[Al Skierkiewicz]

You know there are several threads talking about Minnesota District events and the more vocal people keep bringing up that volunteers are the issue that is preventing that from happening. They are also ignoring the other posts saying that there are many factors that need to be addressed for a move to districts and volunteers is only one.

1. Money is the biggest issue. Where to get it, how to distribute it, how to keep it coming. You need a 501c3 to get tax status and that takes a long time. You can't really handle money without it.
2. Venues are needed. It has been pointed out that to just handle the teams in MN, perhaps 14 venues plus a district championship is needed. That means 14 locations that have to have hotels, food, and a hardware store or big box (Lowes or Home Depot) within 30 minutes.
3. Infrastructure is needed, trucks, fields, spare parts, storage, etc. See #1 above.
4. You need to prepare the venue, set up the field, clean up the venue (bathrooms included), provide for parking.
5. You need insurance.
6. You need contracts for most of this and that kind of requires #1.
7. You need to continue running the current regional events until the move.
8. When you have all of this, then you have to find volunteers to staff the events. You have to feed them and help them find hotel if they are not with a team.

#8 is way down the list. So how about we stopping wasting electrons talking about volunteer needs when there are so many other issues that need to be in place first.

BTW, all of FIRST will go to districts/states/sub-states at some point, it is inevitable.