My team started our mid-season campaign today by taking our first competition bot with a poster attached to it around the school (mostly stem classes).
So I’m wondering, what are some things you guys are doing to invite more members to your robotics group/club?
Very common one, have a showcase day were you invite all the students and show them some of the stuff you have done.
My School had an open house for potential high school and middle school students. In lieu of my mentor attending, I alongside the middle school program’s coach attended and fielded any questions about our programs. My school also created a fundraising campaign for our new robotics space, which I alongside my team’s other builder participated in over the summer.
My school’s STEM-focused, small(only 700 students, 6-12), and robotics is our only “sport”. Word of mouth is mostly how we get new members, but we never get them mid-season.
We never get new members mid-season but, if one of your mentors is on the school board you could set up a summer school class for Robotics, if your school does that. That’s what we do by us
announce it over the announcements/ make a trailer for your club and ask teachers to play it in class helped us get new members.
We have teams demonstrate their robots at school events - open houses, show and tell, or classroom presentations. Interested students can then sign up for a two evening ‘intro class’ where they build and program a push-bot. If they like the process we invite them into the competition program.
The demonstration draws them to the program and the intro course weeds out those that just want to drive.
During freshman orientation all the clubs at my school advertise, we call it Club Rush. There I just place the robot on my desk or (like others have said) chase freshman with it. Super effective, it acts as eye candy.
Other than that reach out to school media (PTSA, announcements, newspaper if you have one) and just advertise. We did these tactics and now we have like 30 members, a real double-edged sword.
I do love eye candy
mmmmm
The rest of our VRC teams from the high school and our mentors hosted a summer camp for rising middle school students because our VEX IQ teams needed new members. We had them code,drive and design a robot to play a “soccer” game at the conclusion of the camp. We also got rid of some old game pieces by giving them as trophies.
