How has the recession affected your team?

[gorillamonky]

our team has had some problems getting the money to run the program this year but we r holding up ok

[BJT]

The state of North Dakota has chosen to not participate in this recession, so we really haven't noticed. Every tank of fuel on my pickup is $50 cheaper now too. Since we draw people from 40 miles away thats a big deal.

[Transformix Eng]

It's tough going!
We are a rookie team from Kingston ON Canada, the nearest FRC team is 2 hours away. Very few people/ corporations in our community have ever hear of FIRST Robotics. With the "good will" money drying up fast, we are finding it hard to get potential local major-sponsors to commit to any sort of support. We are now changing tactics and focusing on finding a lot of smaller sponsors instead of a few major corporate ones.
Wish us luck and hopefully we'll see you in Atlanta.

Jeff

[Team2339]

I agree with the canadian team, more smaller donations still works. We are doing more with less. It causes proplem solving instead of buying better parts.
We gain by losing

[.:Brianna:.]

for the past 3 years all our money has come from donations from parents and friends of the girls on the team. this year we somehow managed to get sponsored by Aetna, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Society of Women Engineers, United Phospohorus, Inc., and a local college. it seems like the recession helped us!!!

[Tom Line]

Our money isn't substantially down, though it has dropped some.

I have to admit, seeing people post pictures of 16 wheels and 8 crab drive modules makes me insanely jealous. We have enough to get to our competitions, but we count every penny we spend. We have discussions over whether buying an extra 4 wheels is worth it to outfit our 07 robot, etc.

We're lucky enough this year to have access to a machine shop. However, they're tight on budget too and we have to be careful to only ask them to do our most critical stuff.

Last year we bought some supershifters and that was our huge purchase. We still talk about how expensive they were

Originally Posted by Transformix Eng

It's tough going!
We are a rookie team from Kingston ON Canada, the nearest FRC team is 2 hours away. Very few people/ corporations in our community have ever hear of FIRST Robotics. With the "good will" money drying up fast, we are finding it hard to get potential local major-sponsors to commit to any sort of support. We are now changing tactics and focusing on finding a lot of smaller sponsors instead of a few major corporate ones.
Wish us luck and hopefully we'll see you in Atlanta.

Jeff

Don't forget you're local media, I know with the recession there are less and less if us media around but there still are some, you're local community papers, radio stations, TV station if you have one, make a presentation and visuals and hammer away at the media to do a story on you're team, if they bite it's a great way to get the word out that you exist and what you do.

It's hard in the Toronto market to do that because if "agenda stories" but in the smaller markets I think you will have good success. Any business and local trade magazines and papers as well that serve industry in you're area.

Then at least businesses will know what FIRST is and you're team as well.

m

[E.L.I.T.E. 48]

Team 48 has been extremely fortunate this year due to our main sponsor (Delphi) continuing to support us. We have had a few parents laid off; however, some of them have used this as an opportunity to give more of their time to the team.
Also, trough the combined efforts of NEOFRA ( Northeast Ohio FIRST Robotics Alliance), and the continued support of US Congressman Tim Ryan we have been able to start four new FLL teams, two new FRC teams, and one FTC team. I am being optimistic about the upcoming season, and I hope that things get better for those teams who are struggling.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by E.L.I.T.E. 48

I am being optimistic about the upcoming season, and I hope that things get better for those teams who are struggling.

http://tribtoday.com/page/content.de....html?nav=5021

20%+ cuts across the area, but naturally, over 50% of local robotics mentors were affected. They would like to remain local, but viable engineering jobs in this economic wasteland are very hard to come by.

Anyone want to start a job networking service on CD for recession refugees? Mentors displaced in such situations (not just here in Warren) deserve better. Is there anything the engineering mentor community can do to help such individuals out?

[techsupport07]

BJT is right...North Dakota has decided to stay out of the recession. We are doing just fine...sure is nice for our state to have over $1 billion surplus!

[falconmaster]

Almost killed us this year, it might do it next year. Maybe FIRST can lower the price by not requiring teams to buy a new control system next year and drop the price 2k?

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by falconmaster

Almost killed us this year, it might do it next year. Maybe FIRST can lower the price by not requiring teams to buy a new control system next year and drop the price 2k?

That would sure be nice!

[aznkazoon]

Like what happened to us is that people said that they would sponser us,but later on said they can't.

[Salbert]

We lost our biggest sponsor and almost lost our 2nd biggest sponsor, but MARS is going to come out a lot stronger, and hopefully with more little sponsors.

[Rick TYler]

At the end of 2008, FIRST was holding more than $14 million in cash and cash equivalent quick assets. This was an increase of about $4.5 million from 2007. Perhaps they could spend down $5 million in each of the next two years to reduce costs to FRC, FTC and FLL teams. In 2008, FIRST collected more than $14.4 million in program registration fees. If they had spent down their cash by $5 million, they could cut registration fees by a third. That would help everyone, and not wipe out FIRST's cash reserves. This can't go on forever, however, since corporate giving to FIRST will inevitably decline at the same time giving drops to the teams.

This won't even touch the insane amount of money local organizing committees need to raise to fund FRC tournaments. With many of our major tournament sponsors losing money and laying off employees, it seems clear (to me, anyway) that either FIRST needs to start diverting team registration fees to the tournaments, or they are going to lose a lot of FRC events.

I predict big growth in the Vex Robotics Competition and FTC next year as former FRC teams look for cost-effective ways to offer STEM programs for high school students. My Vex program costs us $150 per student, per year, and FTC costs us about $250. When I did FRC, we spent $500 per student -- and we were a "budget" team. The "high end" FRC teams spend $1,000 per student and more. The medium-sized robot programs are where the growth is going to be for the next two years at least.

I'm not suggesting that we all stop raising money for our teams and events. Far from it. Even though our club does "little robots" instead of FRC, we still need to raise about $6,000 (we have 45 students) for next year -- so we are looking at the same issues as everyone else. Risk management is a normal business practice that includes planning for bad scenarios as well as good ones. Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together.