This started off really small, but then I got into it… sorry about the length.
I would start by choosing 20 local existing or rookie teams to support the first year at approximately $8,000. $5k for a regional and $3k to be spent in any way the team chooses. $8k is more than enough for any team from one sponsor. Next, as part of terms of sponsorship, I would make these teams agree to set up a 501c3 organization with the purpose of educating high school students, college students, teachers, and other people in the wonders of competitive technological project based learning (FIRST, Botball, etc.). I would set up a headquarters for this organization in a factory (with cheap rent… probably on the order of $30,000/year) located roughly in the middle of all the participants. I would buy ~$50,000 worth of used (but good condition) manual mills, and lathes for this facility. Each team would be encouraged to fabricate parts or their entire robot in this facility. With the remaining $10,000 I would hire a PR firm to work part time to try to facilitate the finding of other sponsors for this 501c3 organization. I would suggest to the board of this 501c3 to contact the people at the PR firm and offer a quid pro quo trade of a tax write-off for the in-kind donation of working to secure more sponsors for the 501c3 organization after the $10k runs out. I would also suggest that the 501c3 organization go to local colleges (mainly the community colleges) and broach the possibility that the facility be the location where Machine Technology classes offered by the college are taught at. This way the schools could move their machine tools to this facility and use their own buildings for something other than a shop.
The second year I would give those 20 teams the same $8,000 each. I would also tell these teams right off the bat that this will be reduced to $6k the following year, and then down to $5k the year after. That would still pay for one event and give them a little extra cash the following year. This forewarning is important, but the weaning is even more important. Companies like KPC&B (personal experience speaking here) don’t realize how hard it can be to sustain a team from year to year, and that a sudden drop of $5+k in funding can easily cripple a team. Hopefully, by this time the 501c3 organization has been able to find other sponsors to cover the rent on their facility. I would give $27.5k to the 501c3 organization to either buy equiptment or to distribute to the member teams of the organization. This leaves me with $62.5k. I would now offer a $2,500 bonus or a stipend of some sort to the first 25 engineers at my company who contributed their mental resources to at least one of those 20 teams, or to the 501c3 organization.
The third year I would give those 20 teams $6k each. I would expand the $2,500 bonus/stipend to 35 engineers. If the home regional for my 20 teams is in trouble I would give $25k to it, but I would prefer not to. If I have $42,500 left over I would attempt to take 5 new teams under my company’s wing at an initial $8,000 each (the remaining $2,500 would go to the 501c3 organization). If I, instead, had $17,500 left I would attempt to take 2 new teams under my wing at an initial $8,000 each (the remaining $1,500 would go to the 501c3 organization). In either case, I would tell the new teams that their cash will go down to $6k the next year, and $5k the year after.
The fourth year I would give my initial 20 teams $5k each. I would lower the bonus/stipend to $2,000 but accept the first 50 engineers that apply. I would also let the engineers know that the stipend will be going down to $1,500 the following year. Hopefully, by this time the money won’t be as important. Assuming I helped 5 new teams the previous year, I would give them the promised $6k. I would put the remaining $20,000 into the 501c3 organization and suggest that they begin to host an off-season event if they hadn’t already.
The final year I would give my 25 teams $5k each. I would offer bonuses/stipends at $1,500 to the first 50 engineers that apply. If my company was to step away at this moment, I would hope that the 501c3 organization would have enough sponsors to be able to sustain an annual donation of $5k to each of those 25 teams my company started. I believe that, if created by people who “have seen the light,” organizations such as the WRRF can do more for FIRST teams and other competitive technological project based learning programs than most companies. In a good economy, and even in a bad one, non profit status and a technologically focused education group are very attractive to potential sponsors. They’re even more attractive than schools themselves. With a central facility that allows for massive amounts of machining, this 501c3 corporation could potentially spin off a for profit entity run by college students and/or hired professional machinists that could service the local area. There are lots of other possible revenue sources for organizations like this. All they need is a little jump start in the right direction. With that, my final $50,000 would go to the 501c3 organization.
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From some of the documents I’ve seen, coupled with (what I think are a few educated guesses) I don’t think FIRST has a good plan when it comes to financing events. How much does the kit cost? I would guess $1,200 for the RC/OI, $500 in speed controllers, $125 in relays, and maybe $1,000 in other miscellaneous pieces (I think that’s an over estimate, but I could easily be wrong)? Let’s round that up to $3,000 total. Registration fees are $5,000 for your first event and $4,000 for your second event. On the surface this looks like a net gain of about $2,000 from teams attending one event, $6,000 from teams attending 2 events, etc. Let’s assume that the 952 current teams (according to this link; http://www.usfirst.org/frc/map/FMPro?-db=team%20events.fp5&-lay=web&-format=team_list.htm&event%20year=2004&status=signed%20up&-sortfield=team%20id&-max=all&-find ) only attend 1 event each (which obviously isn’t the case). This seems to add up to $1,904,000. Mind you this is only revenue from registration fee surpluses; this doesn’t take into account any cash sponsorships of the organization. This, I would assume is where FIRST gets some cash to pay their employees. If they have 30 employees, this comes to an average salary of approximately $63,450. I don’t think that FIRST employees make that much cash. If they did, some of them wouldn’t have to have other jobs. Why is it that Regional Directors and/or committees have to come up with the full amount of $150,000-$175,000 that is apparently necessary to run an average event? Why can’t a portion of each registration fee be applied to the funding of the event that a team registers for (especially when a team registers for multiple events)? If I were a CEO of a major corporation, I would ask FIRST why their organization doesn’t make these events a little easier to put on when it seems like they could. Even a drop of required fundraising by $25k over 50-60 teams would make a difference for events.
I would also suggest that FIRST have detailed accounting and rationalizations for each of their expenditures listed in their grant proposals. It doesn’t seem professional to show someone that you need $X for “Site Visits” or for “A/V.” This might help eliminate some unnecessary spending for some events. There are lots of other little things that I’d like answered, but I guess I’ll leave it at this since it’s 1:30am.
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