Our school notified our team in the middle of build season that, effective in the 2022-2023 season, our FRC team would be no more. Despite popular student opinion and countless meetings pleading to keep FRC 3103 Iron Plaid, our school dissolved our team and plans to switch to VEX. We tried every possible avenue for compromise, including a combined program, but school administration consistently shut us down. Due to a rocky history with the school administration and the lack of communication leading to this decision, we ultimately lost faith in the schoolâs ability to run a robotics program in the studentsâ best interest.
The decision to create a new team was not on the fly - itâs impossible to emphasize just how much deliberation went into this decision. We know it wonât be easy, but from here on out we are dedicated to creating a community FRC team. We have several gracious teams who have offered to take our members in if we cannot achieve our goal before the 2022-2023 season.
As an all-girls team, we want to preserve our culture and mission of creating an empowering and educational environment for young girls. So, instead of students dispersing to separate area teams that have graciously opened their doors, a handful of dedicated members are pursuing the creation of a new team this summer. Weâre starting from the ground up, and our only real difference from a rookie team is that we have experienced members. Weâre looking for support.
If you have experience starting an FRC team and can provide any words of wisdom, we would greatly appreciate any insight. If youâre a mentor looking for a challenge, I promise our members wonât bite! Weâve created a GoFundMe with our current goal being the registration fee. Weâll be reaching out to loads of sponsors and personal connections over the summer to cover comp fees, materials, the works. Weâll be working out of a current memberâs garage throughout the 2022-2023 season and hope to secure a sustainable, dedicated build space by the 2023-2024 season.
Disclaimer - I used to work for the REC Foundation, the non-profit that runs the VEX Robotics competitions:
With all due respect, this tells me youâve never participated in VEX, or if you have, been blind to the culture that surrounds it. The VEX family of programs is just as ethos-driven as FIRST, perhaps even more so, especially with their focus on education and celebration of educators, something FIRST sorely lacks. If your priority is maintaining spirit, culture, and community, then youâll find being a VEX team will have little to no negative impact on your ability to continue these things.
How are they cut short by transitioning to VEX? Are you telling me your tight-knit culture and beloved community solely existed for the purpose of an FRC robot and competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition?
This is an awesome mission, and I applaud your pursuit of it. Are you familiar with Girl Powered, a representation and equality initiative run through VEX and the REC Foundation, which focuses on elevating young women in STEAM fields? I think you may find that there is more program-led support for your teamâs mission in VEX than in FRC.
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In all honesty, I believe starting a new FRC team is going to be the wrong move here. FRC takes loads of resources, especially money and a space to work out of, both of which are extremely difficult to get on your own. If you are at a point where youâre making a Go-Fund Me to sustain your FRC program, you should move to a different program. The program doesnât determine who your team is or the impact you have in your community - thatâs up to you. I can guarantee, though, that a team that is sustainable and functioning effectively within its own resources is going to accomplish its goals significantly better than one fighting and struggling to exist in a program outside of its resource scope.
There is nothing wrong with competing in a program other than FRC.
There is nothing wrong with competing in a program other than FRC.
There is nothing wrong with competing in a program other than FRC.
There is absolutely something wrong with being told you must compete in another program, not having a discussion that concludes in coming to that decision, and all ending up with an adversarial relationship with your school.
Clearly there are culture/power shifts more than just the program they are building robots for or else I doubt theyâd be going through the effort to start a completely new program.
But to the OP :
Please consider that starting and running an FRC is a lot of work.
You could find that your passion for the program is diminished with the amount of effort needed to get this off the ground.
Consider other options, such as finding another team in the area that may be willing to let you join, or share build space, etc instead of starting from scratch.
Iâm sad to hear that your long-time team has been disbanded by the school. We went through a similar situation this last year with forming a new team from existing students It was a lot of work trying to get started, and we were living on the edge waiting to hear about grants and stuff. In the end, it worked out and we have something sustainable.
The main thing I can tell you is that you should apply for every grant opportunity that you see come up. As a new team, even if you are not a ârookieâ team, you are eligible for both the FRC New Team Grant and the NASA Grant (I think you can only receive one of them but you should apply for both). Watch for these after school starts. There are also lots of other grants you might qualify for.
Look at this web page on a weekly basis and apply, apply, apply:
Since you are in Houston, there is currently a Dow one that is available you should look at. But more will pop up in the next few months. We ended up with enough in registration grants that we were able to attend 3 regionals and champs and so the other money we raised was able to go directly to support tools and robot parts.
Also check with FIRST in Texas, as I am sure they have grants and important connections for new teams.
As a brand new team with nothing (no tools, robot parts, or furniture until December before the 2022 season started), it looks like we ended up spending about $2K on workshop furnishings, $3.5K on tools, and $11K on robot parts.
Iâve been contemplating and half working on a âhistory of Pearadoxâ with some details about how we got started and the path to where we are now. Partially to emphasize just how much we had going for us to get started and that it is still a struggle for us year to year with some things, and highlight some of the ways that I think FIRST HQ does not set up new teams to be successful.
Iâll try to come back to this later, but you of course know how to get ahold of me if you want to sit down and talk about it at any time too.
The short version is that as a general statement (ie ignoring any background context that youâve given) I would only start a new FRC team if I was confident I could make most to all of the following things happen:
at least 30k in funds (sponsorship, grants, fundraising, etc) for 2 years
at least 10 students or so
at least 1 experienced FRC mentor per 10 students. Preferably not the same one as handling admin stuff.
an avenue to be able to practice in some capacity. You donât want to find out if your mechanism works or not for the first time on a field at competition.
at least 2 adults that are willing to do the non-trivial amount of admin work associated with a team and plan to be there beyond when a kid of theirs graduated. Someone smarter than me probably has a good list of some of these admin tasks (seems like something @Allison_K might have handy?). Off the top of my head, some things would be managing teenagers and the occasional intra-team drama, setting schedules, helping to set expectations, managing money/purchases, general team communications such as frequently checking emails, networking with other teams as needed, etc.
if a community based team, you also have to think about liabilities and insurance things probably.
Iâve linked the FIRST Guam in the past, that while somewhat tongue-in-check, is a good document to think about.
I genuinely think that less than that and the team is setting itself up to be done in less than 4 years (often times after 1 or 2 passionate kids graduate), and Iâm not convinced it is a benefit to the people on that team or the program as a whole
I really like community teams, and am highly supportive of those who want to do it. That being said, thereâs a decent amount of work required and sometimes fizzle out when the main people involved call it quits, but itâs very rewarding if you can get the whole system set up even if temporarily.
Iâve had involvement in a community team ârehabilitationâ which is a little different than starting a team, but we went through many of the same basic challenges:
Starting a 501c3 (ideal for donations)
Figuring out how to do bookkeeping
Figuring out how to do insurance
Finding a place to work
Equipment (tools / machines)
Student recruiting (not as easy when youâre not tied to a school)
Staple robot parts
This is even excluding all the first-world comforts many of us enjoy (ex. a partial or full place to practice, funds for beyond the first entry fee, robust robot budgets, team funding to cover travel vs. team members paying out of pocket).
Typically thereâs a passionate mentor group of 2+ that drives the above. Students can be huge drivers for this too, but Iâd encourage you to have some passionate and very-bought-in parents and/or other adults along for the ride.
I forgot to mention that insurance/liability, student safety and having a good way to receive (via 501c3) and manage funding was very high on our list of things we needed when we started 2718 last season. Our local 4-H was the answer to all of these questions, as they handle all of that for us. We do have to purchase stuff ourselves and then get reimbursed, which can be a pain, but they take an immense load off the team and mentors with their support and we are extremely grateful. Our 4-H Foundation has been around for decades as well, and that lends credibility to you when you are applying for local sources of funding.
There are other afterschool-type organizations that may be willing to take on a robotics team as well, as itâs often a win-win situation for the robotics team and the youth organization. 4-H, Girl Scouts, and Boys and Girls Clubs are all members of FIRST Alliances and might be worth checking out. Some of them might even have a meeting space you can use if you are lucky.
Great question - and always good to state assumptions. So my 30k/year is under these assumptions:
this is a team Iâm going to be involved with. I donât think I have the energy to start a team thatâs truly bare bones. Iâm sure there are teams that have had rookie years with plenty less than $30k - but I just would not find that to be an enjoyable experience
The school (or meeting place if not associated with a school) doesnât have a workshop/tools/machinery that we can use. If youâre meeting at a makerspace or something like that with tools that can be used - or are committing to Everybot style builds (ie power tools only) this number can also be smaller. But going back to (1) while I would have no qualm at all about building an everybot my first year after starting a new team, I would want to have the capability to do some amount of precision machining and/or 3d printing
the team intends to be around indefinitely. Some of these purchases are investments, and if I were starting a new team, I would anticipate that I am going to be with that team indefinitely.
students and adults are predominantly paying for their own travel/food. We may pay for a couple of students that need it
So with those things in mind - this is roughly how I would consider the $30k a year to be broken up:
$10k set aside for registration. If youâre in districts, I would want $10k set aside to be able to do the 2 district events and be prepared to go to district champs. However, district champs can probably be found if needed - but the turnaround time to pay for district champs is so short. If youâre in the regional system - I would want to make sure we can go to two events.
$10k on robot components - control systems, motors, raw materials, FRC batteries etc. This is probably higher than it needs to be because last time I really thought about this it was during bag day era - so Iâd be trying to build two robots still. But I also think if even building one robot, you can go through $10k really quickly with brushless motors, spares of important (expensive) components that first year, and prototyping. This is probably where I would take money away from the first couple of years if we didnât have $30k, especially if I were going the everybot route.
$2k set aside for general âteam stuffâ. I do value (especially as a rookie) finding a way to develop a branding to be more memorable. maybe some banners, flags, spray paint or other ways of making the robot look unique, as well paying for kids that canât pay for food/travel.
$8k on âtoolsâ. First year a majority of that is going on tool boxes (Iâd recommend tstaks), hand tools, power tools (Iâd probably go the M12 if I were starting over), power tool batteries and chargers, fasteners, sturdy organizers for fasteners and any remaining money on the cheaper items in Spectrums first 10k list. 2nd year Iâd want to prioritize an omio, enclosure, tube jib, and prusa minis with that money, and hopefully any remaining items off Spectrums first 10k, and if it ends up with extra money still, Iâd build up to having a few prusa minis.