Resources per Student

[GeeTwo]

Last year, as of the end of build season, we had a budget of about $500 per student ($20-25K, 50 students). When we won a berth to CMP, we stepped up and raised our budget for the year to about $800 or $900 per. We managed to keep some of the sponsors picked up in the CMP blitz. I think we're at about $35-$40k, and only had 25 students. While we should have a similar dollar budget next year, we may lose much of our space (including the best location for our large cutting). We'd really like to pick the team back up to 30-35, but we may not be able to for lack of space. The next "big thing" to do as we (hopefully) keep building our budget is a second regional event each year.

Backing up again, the resources you really need to grow to add team members are more in the realm of mentors, space, and equipment than dollars. This is due to the high "fixed costs" of FIRST, including registration and the costs of fielding a robot as compared to the "margin costs" of travel and such. If you double team size, you'll need nearly twice as many mentors and twice as much space, but only about 20 or 30% more money to do similar activities with more people. More money lets you do more things, assuming you have enough people resources to make it happen.

Edit: We have eight "full time" mentors and another five to seven "part time" mentors for the 25 team members, which allows mentors to work with fairly small groups, and that's a good thing.