FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international nonprofit that provides PreK-12 students with robotics programs. FIRST has three programs: the FIRST Lego League for students PreK through 8th grade, the FIRST Tech Challenge for 7th through 12th grade students and the FIRST Robotics Competition for 9th through 12th grade students. Specifically focusing on the FIRST Robotics Competition, one would find that FIRST itself is one of the largest financial burdens on a team. This is something that FIRST should actively be working to change in order to ensure greater sustainability of teams.
For context, this argument involves two different levels of organizations. FIRST is an international organization that runs its programs and works to give teams the opportunity to compete. However, the individual FIRST Robotics Competition teams are typically a part of a school or local nonprofit. When a team wants to compete in FIRST events and exist as an official team, they need to register through FIRST, where one of the team’s biggest burdens lies. To register and be able to participate in events, specifically in the district model, which is what New England has, teams immediately have to pay $6,000. That’s a huge amount of money, especially for teams that aren’t backed by a school district. If teams make it to the District Championship, it costs them another $4,000. Then, if a team makes the world championship, it costs another $5,750. So, for a team to be successful and make it to worlds, it costs $15,750, and that’s before they begin to pay for the parts and equipment needed to build a robot, pay for travel costs and cover the many other needs of a FIRST Robotics Competition team.
Quite simply, being a FIRST Robotics Competition team is expensive, and a huge amount of money is going directly to FIRST. To an extent, this makes sense. FIRST needs to pay for competitions and staff, as well as cover other costs of their organization; this is one way that they generate income. But on the other hand, FIRST should also want more FIRST Robotics Competition teams and more students involved in their program, so it would make sense for the organization to prioritize lowering the costs that teams have to pay.
If you take a deeper look at FIRST’s financials, you can see that over $30 million comes from registration fees across all of their programs. This is a big chunk of their $86 million revenue. While I understand that FIRST cannot immediately reduce this number, it should begin to either increase the revenue it gets from other sources or decrease expenses to reduce the burden it puts on its own teams. If teams have to give less money to FIRST, they can spend that money on other expenses, such as travel, equipment or parts for the team’s robot. Teams having to pay less can also help them to be more sustainable from year to year. It also makes it easier to start as less money is needed. While the FIRST Robotics Competition is an amazing program, there are cheaper options, including FIRST’s own FIRST Tech Challenge Program.
FIRST Robotics Competition teams are expensive to run, however a large part of that expense is directly because of FIRST as an entity. FIRST should work towards decreasing the financial burden it puts on teams in order to give existing teams more financial stability, help ensure teams can sustain and make it easier to start new teams.