Let's say you are the CEO

[Aidan F. Browne]

Let's say you are the CEO of the ACME Corporation, a multi-billion dollar company. Your company does lots and lots of good charity work all over the place, including sponsoring a few FIRST teams.

You attended the 2003 Championship and really got hooked on the program.... you think its the best thing you have ever seen for motivating the youth of America.

You decide that you want to do something special to support FIRST.... you decide that you want to spend $250K a year for the next five years... but you want to find a really unique way to support FIRST that no one has thought of yet...

What do you do with the money?

[shyra1353]

imo, you should help rookie teams get on their feet for the first year and you should donate some to the FIRST organization in general .. thats all i can think of right now ...

[Anthony]

Rookie teams are always in need of good mentors. Find a way to incorporate people from your company into the mentoring of rookie teams and help them get their feet on the ground. Help them establish a robotics program that they will not lose interest in so that FIRST can maintain their membership. Offer them supplies and funds for their first years so that they can establish themselves, but at the same time so that they can begin to look for sponsorship elsewhere.

As FIRST grows, it becomes rather noticeable that there are not enough spots at many regionals. Perhaps expanding a regional in an overcrowded area or creating an all new regional would be an incredible helpful event.

[Matt Leese]

You're going to put that $250,000 towards summer internships for those who have participated in FIRST. If you want to do even better, you want to also include some internships for college students who work as mentors for various teams. I've always felt this was an underdeveloped side of FIRST.

Matt

[Amanda Morrison]

...you pack up your car and take off cross country - stopping at every high school to introduce the concepts and encourage a FIRST program.

There's an approach FIRST hasn't taken... and believe me, I'd gladly be the first FIRST motivational speaker.

[JVN]

Originally posted by Amanda Morrison
...you pack up your car and take off cross country - stopping at every high school to introduce the concepts and encourage a FIRST program.

There's an approach FIRST hasn't taken... and believe me, I'd gladly be the first FIRST motivational speaker.

Johnny Appleseed with FIRST teams.

Not that I've put any thought into this...

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by JVN
Johnny Appleseed with FIRST teams.

Not that I've put any thought into this...

John and I have talked about just packing up and taking off.

Think about it - what better way to reach all the high schools? What better way to inform teachers, inspire students, and sprout teams?

I'd give it all to do that. I love people. I love making other people happy. And I love FIRST - what better way to put this together?

[Harrison]

Knock-down the entry fee of the first event you attend.

I think the hardest thing for new teams (and even for existing ones) is to find the money to cover that $5000, and then on top of that find the money you need to actually build a robot.

Granted at 250k/year, that works out to about $250 per team per year - but at least you will be helping EVERY SINGLE TEAM - and I think that makes it pretty darn special.

Plus by saving that $250 on entry fee, it allows a team to put that money towards better things - like say building a good robot, or helping team members pay what it costs to get to events.

[Bill Gold]

This started off really small, but then I got into it… sorry about the length.

I would start by choosing 20 local existing or rookie teams to support the first year at approximately $8,000. $5k for a regional and $3k to be spent in any way the team chooses. $8k is more than enough for any team from one sponsor. Next, as part of terms of sponsorship, I would make these teams agree to set up a 501c3 organization with the purpose of educating high school students, college students, teachers, and other people in the wonders of competitive technological project based learning (FIRST, Botball, etc.). I would set up a headquarters for this organization in a factory (with cheap rent… probably on the order of $30,000/year) located roughly in the middle of all the participants. I would buy ~$50,000 worth of used (but good condition) manual mills, and lathes for this facility. Each team would be encouraged to fabricate parts or their entire robot in this facility. With the remaining $10,000 I would hire a PR firm to work part time to try to facilitate the finding of other sponsors for this 501c3 organization. I would suggest to the board of this 501c3 to contact the people at the PR firm and offer a quid pro quo trade of a tax write-off for the in-kind donation of working to secure more sponsors for the 501c3 organization after the $10k runs out. I would also suggest that the 501c3 organization go to local colleges (mainly the community colleges) and broach the possibility that the facility be the location where Machine Technology classes offered by the college are taught at. This way the schools could move their machine tools to this facility and use their own buildings for something other than a shop.

The second year I would give those 20 teams the same $8,000 each. I would also tell these teams right off the bat that this will be reduced to $6k the following year, and then down to $5k the year after. That would still pay for one event and give them a little extra cash the following year. This forewarning is important, but the weaning is even more important. Companies like KPC&B (personal experience speaking here) don’t realize how hard it can be to sustain a team from year to year, and that a sudden drop of $5+k in funding can easily cripple a team. Hopefully, by this time the 501c3 organization has been able to find other sponsors to cover the rent on their facility. I would give $27.5k to the 501c3 organization to either buy equiptment or to distribute to the member teams of the organization. This leaves me with $62.5k. I would now offer a $2,500 bonus or a stipend of some sort to the first 25 engineers at my company who contributed their mental resources to at least one of those 20 teams, or to the 501c3 organization.

The third year I would give those 20 teams $6k each. I would expand the $2,500 bonus/stipend to 35 engineers. If the home regional for my 20 teams is in trouble I would give $25k to it, but I would prefer not to. If I have $42,500 left over I would attempt to take 5 new teams under my company’s wing at an initial $8,000 each (the remaining $2,500 would go to the 501c3 organization). If I, instead, had $17,500 left I would attempt to take 2 new teams under my wing at an initial $8,000 each (the remaining $1,500 would go to the 501c3 organization). In either case, I would tell the new teams that their cash will go down to $6k the next year, and $5k the year after.

The fourth year I would give my initial 20 teams $5k each. I would lower the bonus/stipend to $2,000 but accept the first 50 engineers that apply. I would also let the engineers know that the stipend will be going down to $1,500 the following year. Hopefully, by this time the money won’t be as important. Assuming I helped 5 new teams the previous year, I would give them the promised $6k. I would put the remaining $20,000 into the 501c3 organization and suggest that they begin to host an off-season event if they hadn’t already.

The final year I would give my 25 teams $5k each. I would offer bonuses/stipends at $1,500 to the first 50 engineers that apply. If my company was to step away at this moment, I would hope that the 501c3 organization would have enough sponsors to be able to sustain an annual donation of $5k to each of those 25 teams my company started. I believe that, if created by people who “have seen the light,” organizations such as the WRRF can do more for FIRST teams and other competitive technological project based learning programs than most companies. In a good economy, and even in a bad one, non profit status and a technologically focused education group are very attractive to potential sponsors. They’re even more attractive than schools themselves. With a central facility that allows for massive amounts of machining, this 501c3 corporation could potentially spin off a for profit entity run by college students and/or hired professional machinists that could service the local area. There are lots of other possible revenue sources for organizations like this. All they need is a little jump start in the right direction. With that, my final $50,000 would go to the 501c3 organization.

<edit>
From some of the documents I’ve seen, coupled with (what I think are a few educated guesses) I don’t think FIRST has a good plan when it comes to financing events. How much does the kit cost? I would guess $1,200 for the RC/OI, $500 in speed controllers, $125 in relays, and maybe $1,000 in other miscellaneous pieces (I think that’s an over estimate, but I could easily be wrong)? Let’s round that up to $3,000 total. Registration fees are $5,000 for your first event and $4,000 for your second event. On the surface this looks like a net gain of about $2,000 from teams attending one event, $6,000 from teams attending 2 events, etc. Let’s assume that the 952 current teams (according to this link; http://www.usfirst.org/frc/map/FMPro...-max=all&-find ) only attend 1 event each (which obviously isn’t the case). This seems to add up to $1,904,000. Mind you this is only revenue from registration fee surpluses; this doesn’t take into account any cash sponsorships of the organization. This, I would assume is where FIRST gets some cash to pay their employees. If they have 30 employees, this comes to an average salary of approximately $63,450. I don’t think that FIRST employees make that much cash. If they did, some of them wouldn’t have to have other jobs. Why is it that Regional Directors and/or committees have to come up with the full amount of $150,000-$175,000 that is apparently necessary to run an average event? Why can’t a portion of each registration fee be applied to the funding of the event that a team registers for (especially when a team registers for multiple events)? If I were a CEO of a major corporation, I would ask FIRST why their organization doesn’t make these events a little easier to put on when it seems like they could. Even a drop of required fundraising by $25k over 50-60 teams would make a difference for events.

I would also suggest that FIRST have detailed accounting and rationalizations for each of their expenditures listed in their grant proposals. It doesn’t seem professional to show someone that you need $X for “Site Visits” or for “A/V.” This might help eliminate some unnecessary spending for some events. There are lots of other little things that I’d like answered, but I guess I’ll leave it at this since it’s 1:30am.
</edit>

[Erin Rapacki]

1st: Brainstorm exactly how many high school students a team should have in order to be successful with a robot and general team dynamics.

Lets say... that most of the stronger teams out there are great because they have at least 25 dedicated high school students.

There are many teams out there with so few students that the they are always struggling in competition. Assume that these teams are also struggling with financing too.

Split up the $250,000... and use the money for grants. An underdeveloped team may apply for the grant, but the terms are that they must attract at least 25 students. They would need to visit neighboring high schools or do whatever is necessary to recruit those 25.

I spun off this idea because I've noticed many teams with too few students to keep up with the work. And many high schools and areas in the country with no ivolvement. So instead of starting more teams... improve the quality of the ones we already have. That will take some sharing of the wealth.

To the teams who are already strong, the grant money could cause initiative to pair up other teams with other schools, or start more large teams in their relative areas.

Just a thought... I'm sure i'll have more

[KenWittlief]

If you are in an area with few teams the best thing you can do is sponsor teams - no doubt about that

or you could set up a centralized 'First' facility in the middle of the city, so that many teams could meet at the same location, sharing a single machine shop, play field, computer room, kitchen, annimation room....

you could have the facility open year round, have a lego league - invite visitors - turn FIRST into a year round activity in your area, centered at your facility

this would make it so much easier for schools to have teams, for companys and individuals to be sponsors and mentors

you could also organize the trips to regionals together, share bus rides, hold local rumbles....

and expand out into other science and technology programs - let students use the facility to work on science projects, technology programs

in other words, use your money to create one awesome place for high school students to go after school and on weekends - where they can focus on where they want their lives and careers to go.

[Sully]

Ok - Here's my two cents

Although teams could always use a boost with grants, being short of money and under funded is a fact of life. It is an important lesson to learn. Raising money and establishing community involvement should be a team responsibility.

Probably the best way to have a lasting effect on FIRST and the future of FIRST would be by making the Mentors (especially Teachers) more effective and allow them to touch more students. I believe the best bang for the money would be to establish and conduct "train the trainer programs". Mentors could be provided off-season seminars to provide Mentors with training opportunities, workshops and documentation. Build on the teaching skills but also provide planning and project management skills.

Maybe even establish some super mentors. Well-trained leaders who move from team to team (rookie to rookie) to help make the teams function better and touch more kids. Make the super mentors the trainers of new mentors. Continue to build the Mentor skills and base. Increasing the number of kids FIRST touches will have a snowball effect.

We need to make all the FIRST teams more effective and efficient. The best way to promote rookie teams is with well-organized leadership. Layout successful plans. Make starting a FIRST team as simple as a cookie cutter type franchise (McDonalds). Too often FIRST teams make the same mistakes

Please don’t infer from this post that I believe that there are not super mentors out there. I know there are, but the more we have the farther FIRST will go.

[rachakate]

- I recently read an article in Attache about the novelty mobiles, like the Weinermobile and the Zippo car and those big montrosities. A gigantic car, with a mobile machine shop and robots, maybe a fold out field. A giant triangle circle square. Drive to the different regionals, different high schools, bring it to the SuperBowl! Everyone loves Wacky mobiles!!

[Tton]

MAKE THE NATIONS HOLD 500 TEAMS! Help start more teams! Hire people to work for FIRST!, they need more on there main staff.

[ChrisH]

Idea 1:

Split the money up and help fund 5-10 regionals. New regionals are the key to starting new teams. Think about it, every time a new regional is started, within a few years it is maxed out with local teams.

But it seems to be even harder to get sponsorship for a Regional than for individual teams. I know for a fact that the LA regional is struggling with fundraising and that we are not the only ones. Yet having a local regional helps ALL teams in the area.

I'd love for half this hypothetical gift to be given to LA, but that leaves us with getting dependent on a single sponsor which isn't a good idea either. (Though it would solve this year's problems anyway)

Funding Regionals doesn't have the potential glory or personal connections of funding an individual team, but it does have a greater total impact.

Idea 2:
Use the money for matching grants. Match dollar for dollar any money a team raises through commercial effort. DO NOT match grant money, only monies teams raise through spagetti dinners, garage sales, or other student operated activity requiring them to sell stuff. I know at least one company is already considering doing this.

This fosters the entraprenurial spirit and multiplies the efforty teams put into taking care of themselves. In the long run it strengthens the program.