The CyberCards have developed a unique response to Dean’s homework. To help spread the word to the public about FIRST Robotics, we have designed an FRC license plate which we plan to make available to the public in 2009.
We’ll unveil the design at the Engineering and Technology Day event at the Indiana Statehouse on Monday afternoon, 12:30-4. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Gary Gray and Dan Ward, the 4th annual event will allow teams and schools from around Indiana to showcase their accomplishments this past year to state government officials and media.
However, to make the license plates a reality, we’ll need some help from the FIRST community.
Among a litany of requirements we’ll tackle are two obstacles:
Submit petitions containing a minimum of 500 signatures of Indiana residents who will purchase the plate in 2009
Submit a $6,000 surety bond to cover manufacturing and other BMV costs
The plan is to kick-off the signature/fund drive this Monday, and finalize everything at the Boilermaker Regional. We’re hoping teams can bring in full petitions and donations to the BMR and really get numbers up.
If you’d like to help with finance or signature acquisition, PM or email me - [email protected] - and I’ll send you a copy of the petition or any other info you need. I hesitate to post the petition online for bookkeeping reasons.
We’re really looking forward to making this a reality. There are currently 70 specialty recognition plates available in Indiana; it is a very competitive thing arena, and we’re not guaranteed a spot if we just get the minimum requirements. It won’t be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but with the help of the *FIRST *community, we’re very confident that together we can make this work.
Great idea Mike. Will we be able to use the fund raising part of the Indiana license plate program? It would be just the thing to help Indiana FIRST organization do some real good.
The plan is to distribute any money raised by license plate sales among all Indiana teams. Perhaps we can set some aside strictly for IndianaFIRST, but that may be difficult since right now IndianaFIRST does not, legally, exist.
He’s right - Libby Ritchie pitched this idea to the then-newly-forming IndianaFIRST group back in 2002-2003. I was assigned to research it and found that the group needed to be an official 501(c)(3) organization in order to apply, since there is revenue generated that goes back to each organization when someone applies for their license plate.
At that time, we did more research and ended up dropping the effort later. I don’t believe anyone took it up afterward and therefore IndianaFIRST is not a legal nonprofit group… currently it is only the umbrella name used when mentors from all Indiana teams are working toward common goals.
I guess the only concern I would have is your method to distribute the funds to other Indiana teams… we originally pitched it to go through IndianaFIRST because we could guarantee the distribution of funds through an umbrella organization and the funding would not be channeled through one team or one individual.
Plates look great- good job on making this happen.
All I need here in Ohio is the FIRST logo, and I’m set. Well, I’ll let Indiana do all the work first. Once you guys get your Indiana FIRST plates, Ohio will get jealous and add a specialized FIRST plate of their own to keep up with the pig farmers.
RJ from RAGE looked into this several years ago also, but at that time we could not get enough signatures indicating interest in the plates so we dropped the project… I would have liked one!
I would have liked one!
