I heard this from one of my esteemed mentor colleagues, who heard it from a FIRST Senior Mentor secondhand in an unrelated conversation, but yeah.
The gist is if you don’t ask for your unclaimed and unspent funds in your FIRST account (anything over and above all the money you spent on non-CMP competition fees) to be regranted to your team by May 1st, the funding will go back to sponsors.
As a team who had all of its sponsor grant dollars sunk into unfulfilled competition experiences I cannot provide guidance on how to perform the regrant process, but you can certainly call FIRST HQ and accost them gently for details. The normal procedure would involve using the FIRST dashboard but I would certainly think you should call someone before you act.
Don’t shoot the messenger - the messenger is only providing this as a public service in case no such communication was actually made by the central authority to affected teams. It would not be a bad idea to contact HQ if you believe you have extra sponsor dollars due that have yet to be placed in your team’s full control.
Thank you for this PSA. I have heard similar things in prior years, but I have not heard anything this year. I really wish we could carry it over, but we’ll definitely put in the re-grant request if we can’t.
So, I’m curious. Since this season (2020) has already been paid for (right?), does that mean any funds showing in your account are eligible for a regrant? Or is it only specific types of funding?
For example my dashboard shows under the heading "Grants and Contributed funds" $$$ from Ford, and $$ from FIM; and under "Program Services" $$ from the school district, and zero "Financial Commitments". The total of which was over the cost of registration.
I believe the $$ from the school district was used to pay for registration this year, but that wouldn’t have paid for the whole thing. I can’t find where which source of funding was applied to what debt. If we apply for a regrant will we simply get back everything that didn’t go towards registration? Or are there specific areas that aren’t eligible for a regrant?
I just checked my team’s account and noted the following footnote. “Any grants, donations or charitable sponsorships made to your team that are not spent, regranted, or otherwise redirected by the donor, at the end of the current FIRST fiscal year (30 June), will become unrestricted gifts to support the mission of FIRST. For more information please review our Gift Acceptance Policy”
This is a recommendation I think. My FTC needed at least $500 (I think?) and I regranted $300 and they sent the check anyhow. I would just file the regrant and if there is an issue I am sure they will reach out. Warning, it does take like a week or two, but I would start the regrant process now, and contact HQ just to make sure you don’t lose out on that money.
Check your dashboard. The submittable isn’t working properly for Canadian teams. There is section for Canadian teams but the form won’t submit unless I check a box required for US teams concerning a W9 and provide alternative mailing address for a cheque. I’ve emailed HQ about it.
Which is the current FIRST policy, and it is new this year. But just to be clear before anyone picks up pitchforks: the policy is dated August 23, 2019. So this did not come in response to the suspended season.
This is true.
Team regrants and how to request funding back to your own program has been around awhile. The only difference in recent years is submitting it online through the team’s FRC account. The deadlines are reasonable.
They just need to know it’s there.
I wonder how many sponsors were made aware of this new policy before agreeing to donate money that I’m pretty sure most intended to go solely to teams? I know I will be asking my team’s sponsor foundation if they knew about it before cutting the check this year.
Seems like a rather important deadline for teams to be aware of. Something that should be a little more overt and public for the benefit of teams.
Because it is truly about all the teams and doing what’s best for them, correct?
Surely no one would prefer teams not be aware of this policy to increase the chances of a windfall for the central authority? When I check the FIRST season calendar, I see no such deadline listed. Funny - there seems to be no dearth of payment deadlines on said calendar for giving your money to HQ.
I’m not sure if details of the policy are new this year or if including it as a footnote on the dashboard page is new this year, but my team has been burned in the past by not knowing that you had to request a regrant to carry over money not spent. Perhaps in the past it went back to sponsors rather than being scooped up by FIRST HQ, but it definitely did not stay with the team. I would bet that many teams learn about the need to request a regrant the hard way by losing money they reasonably expected to still be there.
The policy is new for this year. In previous years the grants stayed in your account unless the terms from the sponsor said something different. First would apply what ever balance in the account the registration fees for the new year. So you would end with fees paid rather than a balance.
While I’m not sure who all received the notifications, FIRST did send out emails to at least some folks associated with donors. This indicates to me that they made a good faith effort to notify donors of the changes.
I received this back in October:
[snip]
Our records indicate you are associated with one or more FIRST Team specific donations, corporate matching gifts, or matching giving processes to FIRST (sometimes known as “Dollars for Doers” programs).
What I got in my dashboard (and we have a balance):
Applying for a Regrant for the current season is not allowed at this time.If you have a credit balance from the prior season, please select this link: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/regranting-process-procedures-and-w-9 or copy and paste into your browser to apply for your regrant.
