Hi guys! First time FRC Mentor, but been in FIRST for about a decade now. Something I want to be able to do is show students how to create outreach opportunities. We live in a big city and there’s often many STEM fairs and other STEM conferences. What would your approach to cold emailing these event coordinators be? What should we be asking? And if your team doesn’t do cold emailing, what strategies does your team do in order to do some outreach events?
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Hey there. Most STEM outreach event organizers would love to have an FRC team demo their robot.
I’d suggest trying to find a contact point for the event online and reaching out. Introduce yourself and explain why you are reaching out, describe what your booth would look like, include a video or pictures from past outreach events, and link to your team website or socials for if they want to learn more.
Then just ask if they’d like you to participate and what the next step should be!
Again, most are going to be really receptive and its a perfect situation for cold calling/emailing.
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Agree, your goals align with these STEM fairs so you’ll probably get a lot of hits. Just explain who you are, what you’re involved with, how it benefits the kids, and what you’re interested in doing at the STEM fair.
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Our team recently was invited to do a short presentation at a 3D printing in Manufacturing seminar for our county. One of our mentors arranged the meeting in general so she made sure to get us on the Agenda. That’s not the same as cold emailing, but my point is more that there are other types of events your should look at too.
Macomb County Michigan is fairly big, but we have an Economic Development group and that’s where our mentor works. They host seminars and meetings like this for all types of businesses, but when there’s something STEM related we sometimes get an invite. Also chamber of commerce meetings or similar.
In the past when emailing groups like that we like to give details about the team, the general goals of FIRST and then very very specifically give the dimensions of a robot or how much room is needed to run it if they want it not as just a display. Too many people underestimate the space needed and will give you about 2 feet of space on the floor and then say, can we see it run?
Other types of events that are good for outreach where you might make connections.
Farmers Markets, Community Events (link up with your local parks and rec department. Ours does a Vehicle Day with police, EMT, fire trucks, construction, etc and they were like hey… bring some robots please). Also the Selfridge air base hosts an airshow and robotics related events where teams will get invited to demo.
The last place we’ve made connections is at college and career fairs at the schools. We can usually get a table to recruit, speak with people who visit and then also send students around to every table and college there to give out info and make connections. We’ve had colleges come and talk to the team about specific scholarships and programs they offer, or meet a new sponsor who had their own table.
Lots of options, definitely worth looking at while also doing STEM fairs
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