Unless we can find somebody to front the funds, we can’t compete.
I agree with JosephM: I like your ideas. We would have to get a list of competing teams in the area and see which ones would be able to incorporate. I wouldn’t feel so bad about not competing this year if there weren’t people on our team that won’t qualify as students next year. 
This is the exact same effect we have witnessed on my team, a core team develops. To try and keep all members involved we are always trying to reorganize the team to be more effiecent and keep all of us students involved.
A Richmond team meeting sounds awesome! Maybe we could collaborate to help needy teams find funding by hosting a joint FIRST open house.
Throw me an email at 384matt@henrico.gaggle.net if you’d like to participate. I’ll send a note to my supervisor and lets see what we can do.
We all need to get together and do something to raise more funds… btw… what sponsor did you lose… juts attempting to compare notes and see whos helping who this year…Ken, thanks for your input, but I know 617 has attempted to contact all of the resources in our area… we recently hosted an “open house”, and invited over 100 people from different technological and engineering fieds to come and see our program, and the Center for Engineering (a division within the school/county)… it did ok, but were still short a couple grand, especially since were attemting to go to Annapolis along with VCU this year… after the season is over (sorry guys, but i think it may be a little late for getting over 10k for this year) we need to get together and get a city-wide fundraiser going. good luck, hopefully see you at VCU in March!
JP
VP Engineering/Design/Fabrication
Team 617
From team 616, we have a little bit of conflict as well. We used to be the team that had no other teams around our area. This year, we now have a new team that is near us. Therefore, we lost a mentor or two, and there are not that many sponsors to chose from. Each year, it is a struggle for teams everywhere to get sponsors and now, our struggle to get sponsors have increased. We will come through somehow though, I hope 
T-15 Minutes to D-Hour and still not paid.
Oh, well. We tried.
EDIT:
It’s over…
(Must not cry, Must not cry, Must not cry, )
Send me an email bud, lets get you on 384.
I’m a mentor for Team 975 (James River). We’re all for consolidating, and have had one or two Richmond-area schools join us in the past. Unfortunately Midlothian high split off this year and I’m not sure about St. Christophers. Let’s all keep in touch and see how we can manage this. There must be at least 5 teams in Chesterfield County alone. Three of these are within a 10 minute drive of each other.
Make that 19 or 20 TEAMS! I didn’t see St. Michael’s in this year’s list for the VCU Regional. This came from the FIRST site of teams registered for the 2005 VCU event.
346 L.C. Bird - Chesterfield
384 Tucker - Richmond
405 Richmond Community High School & Richmond Public School & Richmond Community High School
414 Hermitage Tech. Center - Richmond
416 Armstrong - Richmond
422 Maggie Walker - Richmond
539 Trinity - Richmond
540 VCU/Henrico Education Foundation - Richmond
638 Clover Hill - Midlothian
975 James River - Midlothian
1033 - Benedictine - Richmond
1093 Collegiate - Richmond
1172 Richmond Tech Center - Richmond
1222 ???
1467 Home School Robotice - Chesterfield
1522 Hanover High - Mechanicsville
1530 Thomas Jefferson - Richmond
1541 Midlothian High - Midlothian
1545 Freeman High - Richmond
1599 Atlee - Mechanicsville
You forgot 1086, they are in Richmond too.
Here in Oregon we have come together into what we call FIRST Force. 7 teams that share ideas and fund raise as a group. The Force goes to larger companies (HP in our case) and asks for support. It is great. The teams came together and did a scrimmage last spring in their parking lot for the employees. And this fall they made it happen…
Anywhere there is more than one team in an area this is the way to do it.
My team, #95, gets students from 5 highschools plus homeschooled kids, we have about 18 kids in total, myself included, and 6 engineers, all from different companies. Job or school boundaries shouldn’t mean anyhting in FIRST. As for funding… all of our funding was pulled, as well as our workspace. We had nothing as of June, but after asking around about who knows who in local companies, we scraped up $9.5k and workspace in a little under 2 months. Don’t loose hope fellow FIRST teams, just rally together and work hard.
Joseph - Do you know of any huge VA company that would be willing to help out multiple teams? (I was thinking Dominion VA Power.) With this being a rural area and already having sponsorship from the only large company around here it is hard to find other businesses or people willing to sponsor us even though we placed second at VCU this year. A rookie team starting less than 15 minutes away from us and FIRST raising entry fees didn’t help either.
Very interesting warning. In Northern Virginia, we experienced a similar problem where there are so many teams in such a concentrated area that fund raising was nearly impossible. We eventually had to turn to our own school as one of our main sources of fund raising. It’s very hard in First populated cities to keep a team going. We almost did not make the entry fee this year and may have folded after one year. As far as I am concerned, I think that FIRST should regulate team formation. Even though spreading the program is a good thing, sometimes there are just too many teams in one area. Therefore, if a school wanted to start a new team in an already crowded area, FIRST would say no. While this seems to be hindering the creative potential of many students, that school should then seek to join in an alliance with another school and form a two school team. This would cuts down on the number of students not participating at all. FIRST should definitely consider a system like this.
The quest for funding really can be a quest, and it is generally a required for Robotics in general. But I agree that there is a difference between a quest and mission impossible. Pretty soon, at an exponential growth rate, FIRST prices may end up being a significant portion of the American (and International, at that) Economy. In addition, there has been a recession, and although it is getting better, it is doing that at a VERY SLOW pace. This takes away profits that could otherwise go to teams. It is very sad that this is happening, because teams suffer and fold because of it. I think it is time for massive government funding of the FIRST program, to rescue teams like 384 that are really suffering. I agree that this is one (although the ONLY) downside of FIRST.
384 is not suffering by any measure, but many local teams are. Just want to clarify that.
I think they are funding us already through something known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
So, what are other teams that didn’t make it doing this year?
I think we’ll be having some sort of para-FIRST comp, and working on 3ds max.
Team 1541 had a great season, we loved every minute of it. We are from Midlothian High School, and I feel that starting a team here was a great move for us. We exposed the FIRST program to a whole new audience, myself included, who would not have gotten into it had it not been for the new team. We worked really hard to fundraise, we had a massive aluminum can drive and brought in close to 3000 pounds worth of cans. We also got a good amount of sponsors, mostly through parents and friends. Basically, all I’m saying is FIRST has definately changed my life, and if my school hadn’t started a team I would never have been a part of it.
I guess we are lucky at George Washington High School in Danville. I first started looking into FIRST in the mid 90’s but knew funding would be an issue for this area at that time. As time has passed and things evolved I was approached by the Superintendent and Director of Gifted Resources to do an enrichment program after school dealing with robotics and knew that FIRST was the ticket. We have had a great build season and look forward to VCU. Our team is mentored by 5 teachers and the Work Services Coordinator from the school. We have not gotten any outside help or sought any outside funding. The district officials seem to be very excited about what we have done and the effect it has had on these students. If all School Districts would or could help in this way it would be great and take the pressure off outside funding sources when times are tight.