Resources per Student

[Cothron Theiss]

So here is a thread discussing optimal team size, where GeeTwo gave what I think is just a phenomenal answer.

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

There are teams that are too big, and there are teams that are too small. There are probably teams that are too big with more members than other teams that are too small.

The appropriate size for your team is a function of a number of variables, the most important of which are resources. If you have a big enough budget, enough space, and enough dedicated mentors (including one "big enough" to tie it all together), you can have a team of 100 members building robots, doing videos, award presentations, outreach, and mentoring of other teams and be looking for more members. If you have a $10k budget, a single car garage for a build site, and one mentor, ten student members building robots Jan-May and writing awards and doing outreach Aug-Dec may be too many.

Grow your team resources as you grow your team membership.

I have a question for the general FIRST community that is similar but different enough I thought it warranted its own thread.
Roughly how many dollars per student in your team's budget? I'm sure this is a number that fluctuates, but I feel like this is one that may be more constant across teams and across teams' history than actual team size. For my own experience, I know my team's 2015 budget was around $30,000 with around 30 students. So, $1000 per student, the same as the hypothetical team that GeeTwo mentioned in his reply to the thread on Team Size. However this year, my team's budget and number of students went down (productivity arguably went up), to about $700 per student.

So what do other teams work with in regards to dollars per student, and how have you seen that affect your productivity and success in competitions?