As I sit from my beach chair in the Bahamas I want to write to you about the event you paid for and what I did with the money.
I paid $650 for use of the venue.
I paid $250 for a second security guard since there was more than 100 of you
I paid $100 for a second janitor
I fed my judges, refs, queue managers, DJ, field reset, etc. About $7 per person, 40 people total = $280
I had to rent a sound system, but I got a huge discount, so I only paid $150.
I spent money on additional and trophy kits for the event = $150
Total cost is 1580
I charged you $50 and 24 people came, and paid a theoretical $1200.
But I didn’t charge my teams to come, and I didn’t charge the the two set of teams that brought fields and volunteers.
So I lost about $500.
Ouch
So how does that work in the real world?
– STEMRobotics helps events with the awards, we get grant money to help run events.
– Teams are excited to generate excitement on robotics, so a few hundred expense dollars isn’t a big deal to hold an event.
– Well what about the fields? Why pay for them? In the real worlds you need 4 fields per events (2-game, 1 skills, 1 practice). RECF/VEX rocks, if you agree to hold an event they GIVE YOU A $600 set of game elements. We goad/guilt those people to bringing those elements to lots of events.
– Well food should make up the difference. It can, but $9 beers have not appeared at any of our events. The food is priced for family pocketbooks, not ball park costs. On average teams make about $100, 5 motors worth of profit. 
So why are you bringing this up? In other threads people expect professional judges and refs. So I’m going to use Andrew and Karthik as my examples.
(Made up numbers) So lets say Karthik makes $220K (TCO) per year, and that works out to an even $100 per hour. (TCO includes, salary, office space taxes, benefits, management overheard, etc) I want Karthik at my event, so its $800 for him for the day. But I need to fly, house, pay, and fly him home. Ouch another $1000. Total is $1800.
Andrew is cheaper, but wait, his judging crew is on the same caliber as Karthik. No travel, so let’s assume 8 judges at $800 per day is $6,400.
Foster and Steve run the event. Our real world billing rates are reasonable, but in our environments it’s a low cost item, in what we do we are Karthiks level of comp. So we will go with $800 per day per person.
1800+(8*800)+(2+800)+1200=11,000 / 24 teams = 450 per team for a 24 team event.
Hey Acme, want to bring your 12 teams to my event? $5,400.
Hey Downingtown, want to bring your 18 teams? $8,100 want to go to 5 events? $40,500 please.
Too long;didn’t read Summary
We (RECF, or anyone else) CAN NOT run events and pay people past the venue charges. it’s the community of people (Dave, Jenny, Bill, Foster, Andew, Steve, ManicMecanic, etc) that makes this happen.
I go to an event to volunteer it “costs me $800” Money and time I can spend elsewhere.
You want professional refs and judges. No problem, pay for them.
Thanks!
Foster
