What Does "Our Team Really Needs Funding" Mean To You?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

In all honesty, I do not understand why FIRST needs all this money from individual teams. How much does it to actually run an individual regional?

Back when I started, a quarter-million was the basic price per regional. This included such things as the team social, venue costs, field, A/V, and the like. It may have gone down a bit, but some things have been trimmed--team socials are now put together by teams, if there is one; A/V is slimmed down, regionals try to minimize costs.

Believe it or not, very little of team registration if any goes to the regional. It goes to overhead costs, KOP costs, field building and transport, robot shipping over the donation, and things of that nature.

To the original (title) question, I think the basic answer is something like this:
"We do not have enough money to do what we want to do, therefore we need more." Note: "Need" in that sentence should really be "want".

With regards to "have" and "have-not" teams, "have" teams are the ones with the resources to do what they want to do--multiple regionals, waterjetting, practice robot, stuff like that. "Have-not" teams can do an event or two, but they'll do it with a kitbot chassis and PVC and stuff like that, no practice robot or anything.

The best way to turn your resident "have-not" team into a "have" team is to get the word out to the community that you are looking into doing X, or are looking for Y resource, and talk to places that can help you.