Ways to organize a new community team?

Hi all,

I wanted to get the perspective of how community-based (not school affiliated) are typically run. Besides having a build space, students, mentors, and funding, I know that things like insurance and youth protection policies are important.

Is affiliating with something like 4H, scouts (boy/girl), or some other youth organization a good way to go to handle accounting and insurance? Or is it better to have a 501©3 and purchase insurance? Is one more desirable than the other?

What do community-based teams do when they have kids who are in a school district and need to get out of school for competition? I’m guessing this is left to individual kids and that some schools will excuse it while others won’t

What are the other considerations?

We (Apple Pi) have been a 4H team for many years. They provide us with both insurance and 501c3 status at very little cost to us. They have also provided an awesome link to the agricultural community. To my knowledge, all of the schools who have students on the team give them excused absences, it is just important that the team talks to the school so they understand why the kids are missing school.

Insurance is a must and can run several thousands a year, so affiliating with a group is a good first step.

How do you plan to fund the team? Do you have access to enough corporate sponsors? Raising enough money, say $10,000, is hard to do with just fundraisers. But with a community based team, it can be easier without school boards to deal with.

Do you have a location convenient for all your students? Transportation to your build location? Transportation to the events? Strong parent support is a must.

How will you recruit students? From one school or multiple?

In 2005 in Atlanta, when there used to be presentations given by teams on a variety of topics. Below is a link to one given in 2005.

moe365.org/moeu/multipleschoolteams42005.ppt

The Howdy Bots (6377) are a 3rd year, non-affiliated community team. We investigated 4H and other options but none of those worked out in our case; but that’s not to say it’s a bad idea. You might be able to save some money on insurance and might be able to get access to meeting/build space.

In our case, we opted to form our own 501©(3). It’s a minor pain to setup but not so bad to manage once it’s done. Do note that each state has its own rules about non-profits in addition to the IRS rules. You certainly need insurance, which, in our case, is ~$1200/yr for our small team. Overall, we are happy with our decision to be independent. We have much more flexibility and can create a unique story when we pitch sponsors.

Back to affiliation with other groups - two key points to consider are a) what are your inclusion goals and b) who is in charge at the other organization. In our area there are only two non-school teams, us and the Girl Scout based team. The girls have a great arrangement with the Girls Scouts and do an excellent job serving a wide swath of girls in both traditional and non-traditional schools (i.e. homeschoolers). But, we had boys that wanted to join a team so the Girls Scouts weren’t an option. Most every sponsoring organization has some kind of additional requirements (attendance at other non-robot events, service, prayer, etc) so be sure you are aligned with those requirements. On the management front, be sure the organization fully supports your mission at the high-level and the boots on the ground. We were talking with one group that supports robotics reasonably well at the top-level but the local coordinator could care less and would only communicate via sporadic emails - not a fit.

The rest of the challenges for our team are no different than the rest of FRC: money, space, recruiting. Though being a non-affiliated community group does mean you have to somewhat prove who you are when asking for money or space, at least for the first couple years. Schools and large groups (4H, Girls Scouts, etc) are known entities that lend some automatic credibility.

Regarding absences, it’s wholly dependent on the school. Some of our students in private schools get excused absences and some not. Likewise, public schools seem to be a roll of the dice depending on their principals.

Oh, one other area to consider for community teams is policy. As part of a school or other larger group, you have organizational policy as a backstop for discipline and decision making. Not so when you’re on your own! We think it is important to have a clear set of policies and backend hierarchy in place from the start. This will prevent many headaches and promotes transparency. We have a handbook that sets out who we are and what we do. You can find it here: https://howdybots.org/join/

I’m happy to share more of our experiences if you’d like. PM and we can arrange a call.