What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[EmileH]

The title says it all, but recently there have been some discussions on CD about whether or not FIRST is doing enough to help existing 1-3 year old teams survive into coming seasons. They are putting a lot of effort into starting new teams but the amount of aid (not just financial aid, but also knowledge and support aid) those rookie teams get after their rookie season can make them unstable and drop out of FIRST after only one year.

So, let's garner up some ideas for how FIRST can help existing teams survive and be sustainable for years to come. Please don't just say "give them more money", as we all know that FIRST does work very hard to supply rookies with extra tools and resources to get them off their feet.

[marshall]

Eliminate bag day.

And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card.

[rsisk]

Asking what FIRST can do is probably the wrong approach if you are asking what help can from the group in New Hampshire. Right away you would run into a problem of scalability. The things I do see them as being able to do is:

1. Drive down the cost of participating in FIRST. Reduce the cost of competitions. Increase the number of matches played. Work with vendors to improve supplies of COTS parts.

2. Provide resources that can be used by schools to increase the value of the FIRST program to the schools. Curriculum schools can use would help a lot.

There's probably more, but mainly I see FIRST providing strategic big picture changes that improve the value of the program, making teams more valuable to the organizations that support them, like schools and sponsors.

The FIRST community itself can help the most when it comes to team sustainability. The Gracious Profesionalism, Coopertition, and focus of the Chairman's Award already drive many teams to help other teams to survive. Workshops, training, mentoring all help the young teams survive.

Years 1-3 are particularly tough for FRC teams. This is the period when the entrepreneurs that had the dream and vision to get the team started are replaced by the team members who can organize and build a sustainable team (generalizing of course). The type of people needed to startup a team are not always the type of people that can build a strong, sustainable team. It's during this transition that teams are most vulnerable to failure and need the most support from nearby mentoring teams.

[Tim Sharp]

Originally Posted by marshall

Eliminate bag day.

And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card.

Doesn't make it untrue though.

It hits on the most obvious way to improve sustainability immediately, reduce the logistical and financial barriers to entry. Bag and tag creates artificially high barriers that are too much to overcome for many teams who operate near the margins.


Without it, we could achieve, IMO, the exact same level of inspiration and probably more technical knowledge due to the fact that the students spend more time in goal oriented activities with a high level of motivation as opposed to learning generalities that may or may not be useful in a given year.

[logank013]

I think team density is the only real way to drive down price. I feel like most of the price issues come from hotels and travel costs rather than registration fees. When looking at Michigan, most teams easily have 2 events (usually more) within driving distance (now registering for those 2 events is a completely different story). This would lower the cost of running a team by a big amount I feel.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by logank013

I think team density is the only real way to drive down price. I feel like most of the price issues come from hotels and travel costs rather than registration fees. When looking at Michigan, most teams easily have 2 events (usually more) within driving distance (now registering for those 2 events is a completely different story). This would lower the cost of running a team by a big amount I feel.

Although that is a factor I don't think that's the issue. In lower NY we have two easily accessible regionals. Yet we still see tons of Long Island and NYC teams die.

The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.

Many teams do not even put travel towards team expenses. They are the individual expense of the students.

[dk5sm5luigi]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.

If you solve this then you will solve most of the problems. I have seen many teams with little funding survive because their primary mentor went out of their way to do what ever they needed to keep the team running. You lose that mentor and the team disappears.

This is also a major reason why it is hard to start new teams. You need to find that mentor who is crazy enough to start a team.

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Although that is a factor I don't think that's the issue. In lower NY we have two easily accessible regionals. Yet we still see tons of Long Island and NYC teams die.

The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.

Many teams do not even put travel towards team expenses. They are the individual expense of the students.

Here in KC, KC STEM does a great jobs of offering their own build space (team 1775, world division finalist builds there), and trying to give great resources to keep teams running. While I do think that FIRST might be able to help in this way, having regional mentors and build spaces, that are given by the local FIRST chapter can go a long way. I don't know of any other FIRST area, and having them support it would go a long way.

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by rsisk

1. Drive down the cost of participating in FIRST. Reduce the cost of competitions. Increase the number of matches played. Work with vendors to improve supplies of COTS parts.

We have to keep in mind the place of the local FIRST chapter. I know KC FIRST already spends much more than they'll ever get back from FIRST on the KC regional. I'm not entirely sure where that $4,000 to the regional goes, but I'm sure not all of it goes to the regional. FIRST has dozens of employees dedicated just to FRC, and they have to get paid somehow. Even with all of their generous sponsors, they still need more money. While I think increasing the matches played is a good option, there's no real way of doing that on a regional model without adding more time, which is just more cost. If switching to a district model, then things get even more expensive, and I've heard from KC STEM that they are not in great support of this idea just because of cost.

[gblake]

The strongest fortress will crumble in short order if it is built on sand.

Putting strong foundations in place *before* building FRC teams will probably increase the FRC teams' survivability.

Advising potential rookies to walk before running, or even making forming an FRC team the *second* step in a formal multi-season process might be an improvement.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Years 1-3 are particularly tough for FRC teams.

What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by rsisk

2. Provide resources that can be used by schools to increase the value of the FIRST program to the schools. Curriculum schools can use would help a lot.

This might be the most important step. VEX offers a curriculum that allows school districts to justify assigning a teacher to the program. If FIRST could offer a dual track then that allows the districts to start supporting the program. That's been a big help for us in the last couple of years.

As a friend who works in international development said, non profits can come up with innovations and pilots, but to scale up to widespread adoption requires embedding the program in an institution such as a school or a government. In the U.S. sports are in the schools with salaries for coaches paid by schools. In Europe, sports clubs are subsidized by governments. This is an educational program that benefits many more than just students participating.

It's time for FIRST to take the next step and offer a model that schools find useful for accomplishing their mission.

[hectorcastillo]

This past season our team started an initiative called Project Alamo Robotics Rising to address this exact problem. Basically, every year we've seen many new teams get started in the Alamo/San Antonio area, but only a few of them stay around after 1-2 years. So we've started inviting the local teams and any teams willing to make the drive to our shop where we help them out with any problems they're having, let them use our tools and machine shop, and give them programming help, and let them use our practice field in our gym.

Basically every team that came to our shop showed up with something on their robot that would not pass inspection, mostly bumpers. We helped them correct things like this so that they didn't have to waste time at the competition doing this when they might have less access to tools and resources. This means that teams will pass inspection faster, get more practice time, and most importantly, make it to all of their matches which makes every happy, especially the teams that don't want to play 2v3s (all of them except 148 who will win the match anyways lol).

What this all comes down to, is just helping these teams get the most out of their regional as possible, because most, if not all of these teams only register for one regional. If you spend half of your regional rebuilding your robot instead of playing matches, then maybe you're not going to see FRC as a worthwhile investment of your time.

And we are doing all of this without help from FIRST, who we were surprised didn't already have a system for veteran teams helping out younger teams like this already in place.

[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?

I was curious about this too, so I pulled some data from TBA. A few teams show up a year or two before their rookie year because of off-seasons, but not enough to have a major effect on the numbers.

The last two tabs are the raw data I pulled from TBA and an expanded table showing which years each team was active in.

Team Survival

Sheet 1 (% of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the percent of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 45% of the teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

Sheet 2 (# of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the number of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 75 of the 403 teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

The other sheets are not particularly useful for looking at directly.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?

Without any hard numbers to back it up I would agree with your guess. I would also think that year 3 could be difficult. We just came off a pretty amazing first year and next year I feel we will be under pressure to "do it again". We managed to be alliance captains at both our regionals after seeding in the top 10-12 in quals. We worked hard to find all the sponsors we needed and they were impressed with the outcome (not that winning is THE outcome, but it's certainly a useful metric to show sponsors).

With next year will come the first loss of students who graduate out of the team, and an influx of fresh recruits who saw us last year. There will be more work to train these students up and make up for the knowledge transfer that will need to occur.

Then we will either "do it again", establishing our reputation as a team who can "perform", and put increasing pressure in year 3 to do it a third time, ...or not, and put increasing pressure in year 3 to "recover". I also suspect the push to fundraise, to find and renew sponsors will start to wear on people.

How can FIRST increase team sustainability? Honestly it may come down to "they can't do much without changing the culture". It's very competitive and we see that as a good thing. Every team wants to win. But how do you ensure more rookies succeed? Either you find ways for them to "win" more (more, cheaper, closer regionals/districts?) or ensure that they know that "a winning team" does not necessarily mean "blue banner".

Remove bag day? Sure, that increases the rookie team's chances of fielding something, but that also gives powerhouse teams more time to build something that will wipe the floor with everyone else. It will increase the perceived divide.