Explain that FIRST is more than just the robot.
Tell them about teamwork. Gracious professionalism. The scholarships. The many different students and mentors from all over the world you’ll meet and even the fun you are having. Pictures and video helps as well.
Have you won any awards either from FIRST or peer awards? People like those shiny things. Have your team members wear their medals. Have a few of your students talk about why they spend night and day working on and thinking about robots for 6 straight weeks. Stories about waking up in the middle of the night with great ideas for a design, Chairman’s “word-spreading” technique or animation scene would also help.
Just have the kids tell the board why in the world they’re doing this. Make sure to mention the details about the cost and partnerships between the school and companies, but mostly, let the kids speak for themselves. There’s a reason they go through this for 6 intensive weeks every year. Let them tell their stories.
It helps if you can bring in any team alumni in college and say how the FIRST experience helped them get in/choose a major/understand classes.
show them that you have learned something from first and that you have taken it to heart. Show them that you learned and you made friends and had fun doing it. That is what they want to hear.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1581
This is a white paper that is excellent and from a teachers point of view. Hope it helps and good luck.
First of all, kudos to your school board, that is a lot. Be sure and thank them for that.
- How you impact your school/student population
- Briefly state your short term and long term goals for the team.
- Your business plan or the beginning of a formation of a business plan, showing that you are developing and take the business end of things seriously, listing a few team fundraisers
- any community involvement that you’ve had this year and and plan to have in the future.
A couple of the team members could briefly state how the team/F.I.R.S.T. has affected their lives and choices.
Dress: we’ve begun using polos for team presentations with black slacks. Since your goal is support/money present a unified front, tees for sure.
You guys will do great!
Also,there’s information here in CD for this type of team development.
Jane
Just a minor presentational comment:
I’m sure this applies to many things, but something I’ve learned in presenting to judges and groups of all sorts is that it’s really important to get their attention in a way that they’ll be hooked in an instant. Start with a summary of everything you’re going to say, don’t just start talking about item 1. Give them a direction so that when you’re speaking about the robot, they can connect it back to something.
Stress the different skills needed to navigate through FIRST. Time management, team work, math, writing, business plans, as well as the robot building. Be sure to emphasize that FIRST gave away $8 million in college scholarships last year. Put together a handout about FIRST and your team if you don’t already have one. Ask Rich Kressly, your Senior Mentor for more advice. He can tell you the support that is given in your area.
Figure out what you would like to ask them for. Do the homework ahead of time. Be specific. Be passionate.
Congratulations on this big step. It’s an important one.
Also keep in mind the obvious things like:
keep eye contact with the people;
speak clearly;
be professional 
lol
Oh, and another tip should you use a PowerPoint: Keep everything so fresh and so clean clean. Just as a five-motor, overly-complex arm will fail miserably on the field, too many good presentations have gone in the toilet because of painful abuses of the software.
By the way, I found this article the other day–it might be of use to you:
How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs
(Good luck in developing your Reality Distortion Field. ;))
This is great news!! Let me say that the Downingtown Area School District is one that really “gets it.” I visited with several folks from the district during the Philadelphia Regional including a school board president and principal (I wont list names here because I don’t have their permission).
I’ve already sent them digital copies of how FIRST aligns with PA State Standards and they have the basic literature. Here’s my quick suggestion for your short time with the school board. Celebrate!! Take the robot, the medals and trophies if you have them, a VERY short video perhaps. Make certificates of appreciation for your superintendent and every board member, present them in public and say, “Thanks for the support.” Then go on and tell everyone how unique and worthwhile the learning experience is!
That public display will lead to much easier work for your team the rest of the year when the time comes to ask for more money, teachers, support, understanding, approvals, starting FLL teams, etc. Give all the credit to the decision makers and you’ll get more next year than you had this year.
…and if you want a local representative from FIRST to join in the fun, all you need to do is invite him (schedule permitting).
We present to our Board almost every year (even though they give us no money for transportation or supplies - even though robotics is an elective course), but our subs are paid for, now; we paid for our own subs for awhile! We advisors even paid for our own airfare at one time! And, our Superintendent founded the team and is our biggest volunteer mentor!
That just shows how bad school funding is in Ohio! (enough of this rant … )
The only thing I can add/emphasize from the other posts is let your team members do ALL of the talking. Nothing impresses adults more than enthusiastic teens.
Thanks for all the awesome advice!
Mr. Kressly, I will let the advisors know.
Send me an e-mail to steve.rourke@gm.com. When I get to work on Monday, I’ll return your message with a copy of the PowerPoint presentation we made last October to the District School Board of Niagara. It has everything from soup to nuts in it, and we were able to scoop $24,000 annually from the board’s budget for future growth of FIRST in the region. Make sure you bring lots of people with you to show support – we had over 100 students and parents attend. We also had the students make the presentation, and they also drove the robot around the astounded trustees. Showing lots of shiny medals, trophies, and banners plays out well with administrators. End by showing them a video of the competiton. If you don’t have a good quality video, here’s a link to one from the GTR last year that we used (produced by a student on Team 1114 Simbotics): http://niagarafirst.org (then follow the video link on the top left corner of the page – it’s a big file, so be patient)
-Steve
Describe to them the knowledge and experience that you’ve gained from FIRST and how it has impacted your lives. Show them some footage from the competitions and don’t forget to emphasize the importance of science and technology involved with building the robots. Also tell them how your team members are doing things that most of your classmates would never dream of doing. Oh, and tell them how positively FIRST affects the school’s reputation, they seem to like that kind of stuff.
Since it is education remember to talk about how FIRST teams incorporate all your knowledge, and bring together all the theoretical knowledge you learn in a classroom, to a real life application- physics, precal, algebra, PR, teamwork, English, (hey someone has to write those awards), organization, and problem solving.
I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been already, but 1523 recently did a presentation for our SAC committee. We only had about five minutes and showed the Inventor model of our robot, a 1/3 scale version that drives around and shoots similarly to the real one, and played a video that we produced just for that meeting to help get funding.
We went in asking for $1000 (we needed $2500 for busses to nationals) and said that we need whatever they can give… we went out with $1500 
.
Here is the video we played: http://marsbot.org/node/276
Good luck,
Tim
Impacts Impacts Impacts, How does FIRST impact your learning, your schoolwork, your helping out in the community?
Schools like to see that you get their name out. Do you have any media articles or tv clips that you can show them that the school is being recognized because of your team?
I’d say run the robot for about 3 minutes in the middle of the chunk of time. People really want to see the bot run so they’re in anticipation, have it be the climax after you tell about the team and what you do.
They want to know what the money will be used for, tell them that. Also, show the big figures it takes to run a FIRST team, that illustrates better than anything else why two to five thousand is nice, but doesn’t quite cut it.
Thank them for their time and for giving you the opportunity to present to them.
There are a lot of great ideas in this thread; I would try to take advantage of all of them (if you had more time). In any case, I am on my districts school board, so I thought I could try to give a little insight.
Greg Marra and Tom Bottiglieri summed it up most succinctly;
Impact and Educational value.
In a more roundabout way of saying that, here are my suggestions.
The school board likes seeing awards as much as the next group of folks, but what they really want to hear is that something they have at their school is making a positive impact on students and has not only educational value, but is also enjoyable.
Having said that, visuals are always nice, but try not to get too “busy”. A robot and posters and a PowerPoint, etc… can be a lot to take in for 15 minutes. Having the robot there is, for me, a definite must though. It is one of the most visible, unique products of your team. Other teams have poster boards. Other teams do not have a robot.
Give them only enough background about the game as needed. Rather, tending back to the impact and educational value theme, spend your time with how the experience has caused growth. How has your school district sponsoring a FIRST team helped you? Enthusiasm counts.
Lastly, invite them to see an off-season competition with your team, a Regional event, or the Championships. There is more to FIRST than anyone can express in words. My coach once told me that “The hard part is getting them in the door. After that, it [the attraction of FIRST] works by itself.” I am a firm believer in that. Get them involved as fans of your team; the experience is something I wouldn’t trade for the world–it will have an impact on them as well. Remember to thank them for their time, and that if the point of your presentation is to garner monetary support, remember to impress that as a last point. No use in having the message get washed out by the rest of the presentation.
I lied about the lastly part. Lastly, lastly (really now).
Mr. Kressly is an amazing FIRST Senior Mentor, and his support has been invaluable to my team. Take advantage of his advice.
Hope this helps!
-Mike