Hi, I’m a coach of a team in VA and considering the move to eventually do a more private or home-based team.
I have a decent amount of kids and would like to potentially go towards a private route due to some difficulties in schedules, and for some autonomy in how I run my program.
For those teams that decided to go private, particularly the larger programs, how did you guys decide where to meet? And how did you acquire the space to do so?
Space is actually a huge issue, particularly for FRC teams.
VEX / FLL / FTC teams can be run out of a home provided that the homeowners are willing to give up / share at least two rooms. I mentored an FTC team, DITU that did this. It helped that the homeowners in this case were multimillionaires that were doing FIRST full time.
I don’t think anyone here can correctly answer your question, it’s too specific to your situation, you need a space? It’s not a matter of what’s ideal, it’s a matter of what you can find / hobble together.
FRC 1902 had a build space at Lockheed Martin one year when I was mentoring them. Sounds great, until you realize that doing so meant we had deal with security clearances.
An FRC team, in a secure government facility that cannot be used during daily operations.
It was a disaster.
Freedom and flexibility. You want a space that you can use 24/7 and make as much of a mess and noise as possible.
That same FRC team the previous year had an entire to-be-demolished factory to themselves. I wasn’t there but I hear it was an amazing space.
Build space was the biggest concern we had for many years. We squatted in local business warehouses but that runs dry eventually each time as they get paying tenants at some point. So you end up being a wandering tribe shlepping an ever increasing pile of stuff around. We ended that now have ~3k sf warehouse space we rent as well as meet at the school for the majority of times.
Increasing your price is your best way to get over this hurdle and rent warehouse space. We are now at $375 per roboteer but we have cost advantage of the low cost of school versus warehouse. If we all had to meet at the warehouse at once, it would be much higher cost as we rent the entire very large cafeteria space at school for $40 a night.
If you can be an affiliated non profit that is allowed to use the school at preferential rates, that would be the preferred route. Having an arms length gets you autonomy but still gets you a pipeline of new roboteers and competition space at a reasonable price.
Besides space, you have to have volunteer resources as it overwhelms you quite quickly. Having friends help run the club and parent mentors in charge of each team goes a long way. Divide and conquer! Money, team registration, parts order, competition sign up should all be divided up.
PM me and I can go through the full saga.
I’d say VEX Team Virus is in a situation about halfway between a “school team” and the Vexmen. We started out as a community-based FRC team, and used a small corner of MCCC’s machine shop for storage, and (since I’m an adjunct faculty at MCCC) were able to use the facility anytime it didn’t interfere with classes. About 4 years ago, we expanded the team into VEX, then 2 years ago the FRC portion of the team split off to separate themselves from VEX, and we (the VEX team) started growing considerably. At the time of the split, we decided we needed to become more closely associated with MCCC, so we got involved with the LifeLong Learning office at MCCC, which hosts all kinds of community and adult education stuff. We have a win-win with the college in that our students, 3rd grade through VEX-U, are enrolled at MCCC and add to the college’s headcount, we have about a 50% enrollment (or dual-enrollment) rate at MCCC after high school, and we receive the benefits of not dealing with liability insurance, having a facility to use at no cost (including the gym for the events we host), and 501c3 status for our sponsors.
We decided early on that Team Virus would be a free program, other than team shirts and travel expenses, and we have been able to have enough sponsors and host enough events to break-even with our 65 member team (up from 23 last year).
Kind of off-topic, but we’re from NoVa too! Mind if I ask what your team number is? I want to see if we’ve competed before…
The teams I coach now compete under 4472, but in previous years before I took over coaching they had numbers 36130, and 1478 much longer.