Free Ride

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Petey

I believe that any team that qualifies by FIRST's criteria (regional champs, chairman's, and ROY) should not have to pay the $5k entrance fee. That's like a baseball team winning into the playoffs and then having to fork over money to make it to the World Series.

The fans pay for the world series; unfortunately, FIRST isn't at the the same level yet. So, the teams have to pay.

FIRST simply can't afford to have over half of the teams not pay. If it were just rookie teams, there would probalby be no more than 70ish (rookie all star, and assuming each regional has one rookie winner), but more likely 45ish. That would be more feasible for FIRST to give a discount too; but I still doubt FIRST could simply waive the fee. I bet they would like to, but they can't.

Now, It'd be nice if FIRST pushed the idea of some of the big name sponsors providing funds for this. I know the Anenburg (is that right?) foundation paid the way for LA regional winners in '06. I don't know if FIRST is already promoting this or not, but it is the only realistic method of this happening at this time.

There will always be teams who can't afford travel; Veteran and rookie alike. It's just how the world is and we can't change that.

If my team lost Northrop Grumman as a sponsor next year and planned on just won regional, but ended up winning it and being unable to afford it, I would work my butt off to raise the money. If we couldn't raise the money I would naturally be upset, but that's just the way life is.

[Petey]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

There will always be teams who can't afford travel; Veteran and rookie alike. It's just how the world is and we can't change that.

Right. But I think the cost of FIRST is a great impediment to it expanding to the level Dean wants, especially in less affluent states/areas. New Hampshire has a relatively large FIRST population because it is the home state, but schools here are famously underfunded, which is why there aren't more.

And even though I go to UMass Amherst--one of the largest engineering schools in the country--I've yet to meet a single person here who had ever heard of FIRST.

Maybe FIRST is scalable (although I don't think we can really handle, say, 50 regionals with a team from every high school, all sending more and more to the nats). It's definitely important and worthwhile. But is it fiscally feasible? You've got schools that can't pay for books or can't pay for teachers, how are you going to convince them to pay for FIRST? Hell, my town is talking about cutting all non-varsity-sport extracurricular activities next year. I doubt it will be so draconian--as I detailed in an earlier post, we generally have the money. But at the same time, FIRST is going to have to get cheaper for more people to buy into it.

[John Gutmann]

FIRST isn't supposed to be about competition. If you win regionals sure you can raise more money to go to atlanta. If you cant raise enough money in that small amount of time. Take a little longer and raise the money to start a new team instead. The costs are pretty close to equal.

-John

[MissInformation]

Originally Posted by vivek16

i agree that there should not be an entry fee if they are good enough to make it to nationals.

Every single team out there is good enough to make it to the Championship competition. I suppose you mean "good enough" in regards to three teams having good enough robots, good enough flight crews with good enough skills and good enough luck (yes, luck) to win their Regional, but I don't think that definition of a good enough team deserves any special treatment over a team that has a robot that breaks down, code that doesn't work and a flight crew that allows all students, no matter what their experience, a shot at driving the robot.

Heidi

[Tottanka]

Well Well Well...
I'ts easy for you guys to say it, but we as an Israeli team need a lot of money to go to Nats...
It comes out like this:
Per Student: 1000$ per flight ticket, 150$ hotel, 100$ additional transportaion and food, 40$ for a Visa to the U.S

That is a total of 1290$ per student...
lets say that we need a human player, 2 drivers a coach and 2 mentors as a Minimum for taht travel...

We are now standig at 7740$

Now for the bot shipping its an additional 300$

total of: 8140$ for a team of 6 members.

Our sponsor wont give us anymore money, and we dont expact it to. Its 7500$ spent on the building + 1 regional is more then we expact.

As a city where the average sallery per person is 3000NIS per month, which is 26,000 NIS per year = 6900$ per year, we cant possibly expact to gather more then a 1000$ from good civilians. Say sponsors give us 2 more G's and schools gives 2 more G's we are now at 5.

And now the rest of the money is going to be spent by team mebers bank accounts. I really dont think that this is what FIRST is about, it snot about wasting your own money on that.
FIRST should not give us money, but it should serioulsy help teams from UK, Netherlans, Brazil and Israel (am i forgeting a country?) cross the sea and particiapte in the great event in Georgia.

[Vexkingof716]

Everyone is talking about the team raising all of the money for all travel stuff. on our team the only thing the team raises money for is regionals. each kid must pay for travel and food. Now we only fly to Nats so we dont pay for the travel to the regionals we went to this year(we want to go to the hawaii one next year ) but each kid pays for the hotel food and the plane ticket. I don't think first should give free registration to anyone. if that happened i would be more jealous of of other teams. as it is hearing about teams where the people on them don't pay for travel is bad enough. we are from a very rural area. there are 7 towns going into one regional school of about 500 students. we have around 10 to 13 kids on the team. we have been able to go to 2 regionals and the championship almost every year. our biggest sponser is our school who pays for the registration, then a comunity group thing pays for another regional usually and the rest we raise ourselves. we get 1500 each year from certain companies but the rest is from the community. each student is asked to go out into the community and ask for money. most of the donations are 25 to 50 dollars each. there are only a few big donations. we are constantly asking for more.

Plus in our school because we are a newer school the other clubs all have there fundraisers like candy sales so we can't do those so we have to be really creative. Not only is our team small 7 or 8 of the studenst are from one town then there are a few from one or two other towns and i'm the only one from my town. we got the money to go to nats a few days before it was due this year. it was a lot of work but we got it.

now we are seting our goals higher for next year and going for enough money so we can go to the hawaii regional.

[John Gutmann]

Originally Posted by Tottanka

Well Well Well...
I'ts easy for you guys to say it, but we as an Israeli team need a lot of money to go to Nats...
It comes out like this:
Per Student: 1000$ per flight ticket, 150$ hotel, 100$ additional transportaion and food, 40$ for a Visa to the U.S

That is a total of 1290$ per student...
lets say that we need a human player, 2 drivers a coach and 2 mentors as a Minimum for taht travel...

We are now standig at 7740$

Now for the bot shipping its an additional 300$

total of: 8140$ for a team of 6 members.

Our sponsor wont give us anymore money, and we dont expact it to. Its 7500$ spent on the building + 1 regional is more then we expact.

As a city where the average sallery per person is 3000NIS per month, which is 26,000 NIS per year = 6900$ per year, we cant possibly expact to gather more then a 1000$ from good civilians. Say sponsors give us 2 more G's and schools gives 2 more G's we are now at 5.

And now the rest of the money is going to be spent by team mebers bank accounts. I really dont think that this is what FIRST is about, it snot about wasting your own money on that.
FIRST should not give us money, but it should serioulsy help teams from UK, Netherlans, Brazil and Israel (am i forgeting a country?) cross the sea and particiapte in the great event in Georgia.

Have you contacted any teams here in America? I am sure they would love to try to help out.

-John

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Tottanka

I'ts easy for you guys to say it, but we as an Israeli team need a lot of money to go to Nats...

I'n not sure that any of us can assume that anything is easy when it comes to finding/raising money for the opportunity to compete at the Championship. Every team is unique in its needs, location, make-up. No 2 teams are alike and we wouldn't want the teams to be.

The title of this thread is Free Ride. As KarenH wisely said, nothing is free, someone pays. At this point, I do not believe that the organization of FIRST can absorb the registration costs of teams that qualify for the Championship by a win. I do believe that all of the students, mentors, parents, and sponsors, and the people of FIRST - understand the efforts that teams make in accomplishing this goal and in a big way, it is one reason among many that the Championship is such a time of celebration.

[EricH]

I think it would be a bad idea, just in terms of finances.

Some assumptions:

1. Only teams that have not already qualified/registered win awards to send them to Atlanta.
2. Registration is $5,000, travel is $1,000/person. (Just to make it easier)
3. All qualifying teams send 4 people and a robot.
4. There are 6 qualifying teams per event.

So, for one team sending four people, costs would be about $9,000.
$9,000 *6 (for one regional)= $54,000 per regional
$54,000 *36 regionals=$1,944,000 to send all the teams that qualify, plus about another $1000 per non-North American team (of which there would be 12--Israel and Brazil)=$1,956,000 all told.

Now, let's round to $2,000,000 (2 million) for ease of use. We will also assume a cap of 400 teams on the Championship.

2 scenarios:

1. The $2 million is divided among all the teams at entry. $2,000,000/1,000= $2,000 extra per team registration fee, putting the intitial money at $8,000 for the kit and one regional. I'm not sure how many teams would still survive.

2. The $2 million is divided among the teams that pay to go to Championships. 400-(36*6)= 184 paying teams. $2,000,000/184=$10,869 added. Ouch.

It is not financially feasable to do a "free ride" or even a substantial discount. Start fundraising now for next year if you can.

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The fans pay for the world series; unfortunately, FIRST isn't at the the same level yet. So, the teams have to pay.

I would like to extend on this.

FIRST is defiantly not at the leagues of the NBA, NFL, not even the NHL. The only way that these events are paid for are mostly by fans. We all buy tickets to see our favorite athletes compete their hearts out and hopefully to see our team win. Now I'm not sure but FIRST is trying to get its name out is it not? And every year teams are started because a few people came to a free regional or championship event and were hooked. I want you to consider, if we tabbed one, two or even three dollars to get into the event for all spectators and tell me how many people will still come and how many people will still start teams. Of course there will be some, but the rate as of past years would have dramatically stopped.

We want MORE people in FIRST, not less people and 'cheaper' fairs for teams.

Pavan.