How has the recession affected your team?

[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.