I’m a newbie to Chief Delphi and a relative newbie to FIRST. I’m hoping that there are experienced team members here who can offer advice about a problem that I can forsee us having.
My problem is that I think we need two phrases that are something like: “New financial organization start date” and “Team experience start date”. We’re a new team in many important senses. We just got our number late this fall, we didn’t sign up as team until we were sure we’d raised the $6K for a regional (days before the deadline) so we missed some PTC training opportunities, we didn’t have any existing software or many spare parts, etc. But more than five experienced team members left another team to start this one. So, we’re not a rookie team. I’m OK with that.
My difficulty is that now that we built a robot and won an award, we want to write press releases, apply for new grants, solicit sponsors, etc. But if they look at the FIRST information, it has our rookie year as 2006 which we inherited from the other team. But we haven’t had three years of fundraising under our belts. Or parts and tool collections. And so on.
So… how do we communicate that the rookie year number is a FIRST artifact without looking poorly? I don’t want to look like a whiner or someone trying to explain away a lie. Do you put something in your grant application text? Do you try to make it a verbal explanation? What do you do?
Trying,
Use the info you are giving us. Just because you don’t qualify as a true rookie, the needs are still there. Many experienced teams have not had a chance to gather a lot of tools or a team of mentors. We all need money and engineering support. Tell your potential sponsor mentor organization what you need and why. If they don’t know First, experience will likely not have any weight anyway.
It would be my suggestion for you to contact FIRST directly and ask for some help with this. The good people here can offer opinions but you want to be sure that all of your information is correct, informative, and accurate before you begin to fund raise, solicit sponsors, or apply for grants.
Do keep in mind that FIRST handles teams “status” of whether they are a rookie or not on a team to team basis considering the guidelines of what determines a rookie team are in fact just guidelines not rules. Contact FIRST and have them change what they have in the records as your first year.
If you explain your situation and they deem you as a rookie team then you will be considering a rookie team.
That is what happened to us, FIRST deemed us a rookie team.
If you guys started with nothing then I would count you as a true rookie team. Even if all your members aren’t new to FIRST.
Thanks. We’ll talk with FIRST and see if they have anything that can help. It’s difficult to tell a sponsor that we’re a first year team when they can look up on the FIRST site and see our ‘rookie year’ is 2006.
Corey,
We did discuss our ‘rookie status’ with FIRST, and they deemed us a non-rookie. We’re fine with that and accept their reasoning and decision. The issue is with us looking for sponsors and how we answer the question about when the team was formed.
This is not an uncommon issue in FIRST. Being a FIRST team does not always mean an upward trajectory in knowledge and funding. There are numerous teams that have ups and downs. All their mentors leave. All their students graduate. All their sponsors quit. I am familiar with teams that drop out for a year or two and then come back. Old number, but everything else is new. There is a team I know well who was seriously circling the drain last year, but is back with enthusiastic new teachers.
I wouldn’t over think this. Congrats on starting up the team and your award. Mention that you have a new team and are fortunate to have some mentors with experience in FIRST and then move forward with what you want to do, which is the real story.
I called FIRST this afternoon and the woman I spoke with suggested adding a note to any written requests for funds, writing to the [email protected] folks for further clarification and suggesting a change for TIMS next year.
It’s not really a great fix but I guess it’s one that I’ll have to live with for now.
Perhaps you can turn it into a selling point: “A few students who had done FRC in the past, but had no team go together with some new students to form a new team. Because FIRST saw a few veterans on the team, we are not eligible for the special awards and extra assistance usually offered to rookie teams, yet we still have all the challenges that all rookie teams must face. Here’s how you can help us, and what we can do for you…”
This is your team’s first year of competition in FIRST. Just say that. It is 100% true… even if it isn’t true for your individual members, it is true for the TEAM, and it is the team that won the awards.
If anyone even thinks to check on the FRC website, AND happens to notice a different “rookie year” designation, by that point they will probably be interested enough in what you are doing to at least ask about the discrepancy before writing you off.
FIRST will agree that even though your team doesn’t qualify for rookie awards, that this *is *the TEAM’s first year of competition. Well, at least I think they will.
Jason
Edit: Note… I should add that I am assuming that the majority of the team is also new to FRC?
In our 3rd year, the success of our original team (1596) caused us to grow to the point where we had to split (to form the spinoff 1535 - my team), and FRC accidentally listed us as a rookie team, with a 2000 series number. We actually asked to be given a 1500 number and delist our rookie status. Why? Because we found that local sponsors were much more responsive to supporting an established team. Now in our fifth year (3rd as the spinoff team), local sponsors are actually looking us up to support a team that is growing and prospering and looks like it will be around for awhile. I’m not sure we would have had the same response as a rookie team. Sure, we missed out on the Rookie contests for that year, but this would not have been right anyway and we gained more than we would have lost.