Recruiting?

[Ryan Simpson]

It's important to make your team visible. We visit the middle schools and are at 8th grade orientation at both of our team's two high schools.

My team has students visit all of the freshmen biology classes to explain what our team is, what we do, etc. The facts that FIRST looks great on college applications and that there are FIRST scholarships are major selling points.

I don't think an active member is defined by attendence, but by contributions. If someone comes 3 times a week, but is a huge help during those days, that person is still a valuable member of the team. It's possible that some freshmen could be scared off by such a large commitment. Myteam is fine with people not being able to come every single day, just as long as they are consistently there and are helpful. If they originally don't plan on attending every day, but find they love it, they'll make a point of being there very often.

[Rick Wagner]

I can't say that team 294 has been a role model in recruiting, because we worry and struggle every year to get more members, especially girls, on the team. But we are growing, albeit slowly, and we are taking thirteen students, six mentors, and four parents to the World Championship this year (we won the San Diego Regional). Two years ago we started an in-house FLL team that now has 14 elementary and middle school students. We hope that in a few years, those FLL graduates will go on to become dedicated FRC high school team members.

We also do many of the outreach activities mentioned above, such as school presentations, demonstrations, community events, back to school nights, etc. I think we need to keep on doing what we're doing and find ways to do it more and better.

[Wildcat]

what my team does is we will occasionally do demo's @ the districts middle and sometimes elementary schools as well as demos in public events such as local parades and festivals. another thing we do is run an ad on my schools anouncements and display flyers around our campus. the thing i think really helps is that we take all of the possible recruits that the commercial brings to an off-season competetion with the team-Kettering Kickoff. here's one of our commercials we put on the anouncements for you to get an idea of what one may look like. This was made by another member of my team.
for the 2009-2010 school year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SsBInRVfMs
2008-2009 school year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65qsE_Y8v9c