FAHA: Who travels free?

[JaneYoung]

Our travel resources: Sponsors, booster club, families

One of our short term goals after the booster club formed 5 years ago, was to be able to fund the travel for the mentors. The mentors still pay for their food & entertainment expenses. We met that goal and 2 years ago we started paying for chaperones' hotel rooms as well. Discussions regarding travel expenses have revolved around questions such as, would our sponsors want us to use monies for travel? The answer to that is that we think our sponsors want 418 to compete as well as possible. We are frugal, look for reasonably priced hotels, and plan ahead.

It has also been a goal of ours that anyone who qualifies for travel (service hours met) and wants to travel should not stay home because of financial reasons. We offer travel 'scholarships' to those who need it, full or partial. The student talks with our teacher in confidence and the request is kept anonymous and submitted to the board.

In general, students pay for their travel expenses. If the booster club can, it will donate to try to help with the overall expense. An example would be to help with the bus expense for travel to Atlanta. The amount of that donation varies year to year, depending how well the fundraising has gone.

Everyone pays for their meals and entertainment. We try to plan meals ahead by looking at the area and what is available. We also plan for a movie the first night of travel which serves as our entertainment.

[Kims Robot]

We generally try and set it up so there is very little payment from team members. All of our involved mentors travel for free as long as the team budget allows (and it has so far). Involved mentors can be Harris, Parents, or local community members. Chaperones & the Teacher(s) also fall into this category, although generally we try and get this money from the fundraised money if possible, not from the Harris budget.

For the students we do a requirements system. We require them to have participation amounts in the team meetings & subteams, do fundraisers, community service and demos, have build season hours and a few other things. If they meet all of these requirements, their trip is paid for by the fundraised team monies. We do require small deposits, and the deposits may increase based on how much money is raised.

This system has worked well for us for the last three years, but may be harder to do for teams that dont have the same budget size/large sponsor that we do.

[Racer26]

1075 has always been a 'poor' team as far as funding, certainly not on the engineering front though...

Students have always paid somewhere on the order of ~$200 for a regional weekend.

When I graduated high school and became a mentor to the team, particularly in the 2007 and 2008 seasons, the team picked up the tab for my hotel room, but not for my food, and whatever else. I thought it was fair repayment for my time and effort (blood, sweat and tears too), and I think it was sort of massaged into the costs of everyone else (being that I'm the only non-teacher mentor, this didnt add much to anyones costs.)

[Sunshine]

Last year as a rookie team we were fortunate to pay for everything when we went to a regional and Atlanta.

This year we needed to charge $50 for each member going to St. Louis. There will be no charge for those attending Milwaukee because we commute to that one. If we make it to Atlanta there will be about $100 fee for students because of the airfare expense.

Corporate mentors have their expenses paid by their companies. School personnel are covered through the district.

Everyone pays for their own food while on the trip.