Quick question. Has any team experienced difficulty in navigating FIRST’s finance department and the new payment policy?
We accidently submitted a PO to cover the cost of the competition a few days before November 14th and after the payment due date we were awarded a grant to cover our regional competition fees. Now FIRST is not willing to honor the grant and use those funds to cover our competition fees instead of the PO our district submitted. They are not willing to shift funds around and the grantee is saying it is 100% FIRST’s problem. I am waiting patiently for someone from FIRST to call me back to help but as of now they are just saying it is our new policy and tough luck to you and your team. As you all know finding the $6,000 plus other costs is very difficult and we are being forced to pay something that we worked hard to get covered by a grant.
Anyone else have any guidance for us? FIRST if you read this can you please help… we are in desperate need of the funding and this is going to hurt our team to a point of almost having to shut things down permanently.
To me, this is flat out unacceptable on FIRSTs part. I won’t pretend to know the full story, but to have a team pay registration on time, then be awarded a grant after the payment deadline, and not let them use that grant and issue a credit for the overage? No. Just no.
509, has a similar issue. I talked to someone in finance and requested a manager call me back, that was in December and I still haven’t heard from the manager.
Hi all! Thanks for the information. I have been able to talk to a manager at FIRST and they are going to try to work with teams that have had this policy effect them in a negative financial way. I think there was and is a bit of a communication issue as I was just told NOT to pay on time if we are waiting on grants to come in. I believe that FIRST is a great program but since it cost so much we need to have flexibility and not such hard policies that can hurt teams financially. I am hopeful that things will get fixed.