Since 2015, how have team prices increased or decreased? From the thread cited above, it sounded like in 2015, nearly all PNW teams paid between $0 and $6800 for registration that season, which included DCMP if they qualified. How have those costs changed over time?
Where is this documented? The links from the source above no longer work, and the PNWFIRST, FIRSTWA, and Oregon FIRST websites are all unclear about what the actual costs are to participate in FRC in the PNW. Is there better documentation somewhere?
Has this funding model been a part of the growth stagnation in the PNW? If so, is that a bad thing? Does the model perhaps help to support existing teams more?
Since 2015, how have team prices increased or decreased? From the thread cited above, it sounded like in 2015, nearly all PNW teams paid between $0 and $6800 for registration that season, which included DCMP if they qualified. How have those costs changed over time?
FIRSTWA uses sponsors, namely OSPI, the help subsidize costs. The amount they get from OSPI varies from team to team, based on a number of things such as location, population, and other things im probably forgetting. FIRSTWA’s grants/sponsors made the cost for 4513 around $6000 in 2017.
Has this funding model been a part of the growth stagnation in the PNW? If so, is that a bad thing? Does the model perhaps help to support existing teams more?
I dont think its helping, but I dont think its a root cause. No matter the cost, teams are still going to spend anywhere from $15-30k just to compete though a season (2 district events, DCMP, World’s.) We essentially pay less than any district team for 3 events, and even if you dont qualify for DCMP you still get a better value than our Regional counterparts.
This has been a sore spot for many teams in rural areas though. It may be cheaper for those who go to DCMP, but many teams dont make the cutoff, and their registration will go up without receiving any of the benefits for that year. I have heard many complaints out here from this, especially when we first transitioned, as many teams out here have a hard enough time staying afloat.
I’m curious about how teams respond to dynamic registration fees based on needs. Do any big budget teams respond with “I want to pay the same amount as everyone else. They can find their own money like we do.”? If so, how does PNW (or the greater community) respond?
That I know of, no. The OSPI grant is the only thing that makes the “discount” (cant think of a better name for it) different anyways (IIRC, I may be totally off the mark here and someone with more knowledge should come correct me if its wrong), which is a grant that every WA team has to register for anyways to compete.
Id be curious if any big team did say that ever thought about the Boeing and Microsoft sponsorships that offset a bit of their costs (as of 2015, every Boeing mentor gets their team $10/hour mentoring](https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1438132&postcount=2)) that teams in Eastern Washington dont normally get access to due to their location.
The funding model for Oregon teams that live outside of the Portland area is a little different. I believe it is closer to the teams from Eastern Washington.
I agree that the before-sponsorship registration bill is a definite sticker shock. But with the ODE and a number of other donors have been extremely generous to be able to drive the main registration costs down as well (HP, Tripwire, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Autodesk, etc).
However, there is another issue that is almost more difficult for these teams: we have to travel to all of our events. There is a team from Ashland that has to travel ~5hrs to get to their closest event. Even for our team from Corvallis, we still have to travel about 1.25hrs (a bit less to Wilsonville, a bit more to CAIS or Lake Oswego) to get to our events. Add to this other expenses including hotels and food.
I like the idea that we don’t have to worry about the extra expense to pay for DCMP, but it is still expensive.
The OSPI money is not the “discount” teams see on their bill from FIRST WA, though we certainly wish that OSPI money was paid directly to us for reasons I’ll explain later. The OSPI i-grant is considered a building grant, that, is a grant applied for by a particular school and the state provides reimbursement directly to the school for acceptable costs (which are quite broad by FIRST WA design) that are noted in the grant application. Those funds are only available to public schools in the state of Washington.
It is true however that FIRST WA staff does take part in reading and scoring those grants and is instrumental in determining the portion of the available funds each of the FIRST programs receives and of course lobbies for an ever increasing number of dollars for FIRST i-Grants, in partnership with teams, and we have been quite successful at it.
The basics of how it works and why it was done.
A donor does not get excited when you ask them to cover the Janitorial fees, trucking fees, electric bills, equipment rentals, rent ect. However they do get excited about funding teams.
In the traditional pay FIRST model most people do not realize that their $5,000 registration fee does not cover producing the event and that the RD is responsible for raising all of the money that it takes to put on the event.
In that model the true cost and impacts aren’t really known by many participants and donors.
Put that all together and PNWFRC teams now receive a bill in excess of $10,000 that includes the $4000 FIRST District Team registration fee, the $1000 District registration fee, and their percentage of the $256,000 paid to FIRST for the “right” to hold the PNWDCMP. It also includes their percentage of the projected actual direct costs for producing the 9 district events and the DCMP. Finally it also includes a portion of the FIRST WA overhead in proportion to the percentage of FIRST WA effort and Fieldhouse utilization that the FRC program requires. Note FIRST WA is responsible for all FIRST programs in WA state in addition to having responsibility for the PNW district.
That does not mean however that anyone pays $10,000 out of their pocket or any other grants they may get such as the OSPI i-Grant. Remember those donors we were having a hard time getting excited about paying for Janitorial fees? They are now paying down the team fees through the FIRST WA grant which is available to all teams in the PNW district. I can’t speak for the most recent season as I had ended my FIRST Senior Mentor service and had yet to take on an actual FIRST WA staff position, but in the previous season no team payed more than the FIRST $5,000 registration fee plus their portion of the $256,000 DCMP fee. Other teams did pay less.
You may ask why do some teams pay less than others. Part of it is need based and part of it is that donors, now being asked to support teams, are getting more specific in directing how their donation is spent. For example a donor may stipulate that money go to a specific type of team, a specific geographic area or make pretty much any legal stipulation they might choose. Other donors provide unrestricted grants that FIRST WA may use for any team. Also note that rookie teams do not pay an extra $1,000 like rookies in the traditional pay FIRST directly model.
This funding model has also allowed FIRST WA to strengthen relationships with some key Stake Holders such as Boeing and Microsoft. Both have employee volunteer hour matching programs and now those funds are paid directly to a team’s FIRST WA booster account, currently with zero overhead. It is also tied to the Boeing Registration which now requires the employees and retirees who apply for the grant also complete and log a minimum number of hours in that system. Microsoft also now pays matching hours, directly to FIRST WA, in one big quarterly check that again goes into a team’s booster account. In other cases it can be a direct grant to FIRST for example when an employee is a FIRST WA volunteer but not directly affiliated with any particular team or when a person is both a mentor and volunteer and directs their funds appropriately.
Note the no overhead on this money going to teams. When it goes to public schools they can keep a portion of the grant, hours matching donations or pretty much any donation to the team, for overhead. For the OSPI i-grant the state caps that at 7% but some districts routinely keep 10% or more of any money that goes through them, if they can get away with it.
Also note that the money that goes into a team’s booster account can be used to pay for registration fees or used for things like robot parts and team travel.
This funding model has also allowed FIRST WA to strengthen relationships with some key Stake Holders such as Boeing and Microsoft. Both have employee volunteer hour matching programs and now those funds are paid directly to a team’s FIRST WA booster account, currently with zero overhead. It is also tied to the Boeing Registration which now requires the employees and retirees who apply for the grant also complete and log a minimum number of hours in that system.
I’m not sure I understand this. I am a Boeing mentor who submits for the Boeing grant and for hours matching. The dollars for my matched hours are sent to an account at the school, and have been since I started mentoring in 2013. Our other Boeing mentors also send the funds for their hours matching to our account at the school.
It sounds like it is FIRSTWA’s expectation that we do something different? As far as I know this has never been communicated to us Boeing mentors.
Feel free to PM me if this is diverging from the point of the thread. Thanks!
