Fundraising, Grants, Mentoring and Leagues

[f...@playingatlearning.org]

All,

Here are the topics in this message:

1. Fundraising information
2. Available Grants
• John Deere  (via Blue River Technology subsidiary)
• FIRST FTC Hardship Grant   
• Donors Choose
• Gene Haas Foundation
• PG&E grant
• FIRST national grant site
3. Mentoring & finding mentors
4. League interest
5. Reminder - kickoff details coming

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1.  A few questions have come in about Fundraising.  FIRST does have a fundraising toolkit focused on teams (with most materials provided by teams). For teams that are not affiliated with a public school, nonprofit organization or similar,  FIRST has partnered with Hack Club to provide fiscal sponsorship for any FIRST Teams that wants this. There is a short flyer available on the FIRST website and this is the direct link with more information and to get started with Hack Club.

2.  Grants!

• John Deere grant available for teams within 15 miles of Santa Clara (or have a John Deere employee as a mentor).  More Details - deadline for FTC teams is September 27, 2025.  Note that you can not have paid your FIRST registration. You can register with FIRST but SHOULD NOT PAY for your registration as you will forfeit receiving a John Deere grant.

• FIRST has FTC Hardship grants available to rookie and returning teams to pay for FIRST registration and items available for purchase on the FTC Storefront.  FIRST is asking partners to collect the information to submit teams for this grant.  For our NorCal teams, the application form is now available.  Application Form - note that funds are limited, so submit early.

• Through the generous support from 3M, FIRST related DonorsChoose project funding is now available to any US-based full-time educators and school district employees who work directly with students at least 75% of the time from Public Schools, Public Charter School.   FIRST educators will create a project on DonorsChoose and once the project is live, they MUST complete this googledoc form to be considered for this selective funding opportunity. Projects will be reviewed to ensure they meet donor intent and partial funding will be allocated accordingly. More information

• The Gene Haas Foundation has been providing FIRST grants to FRC teams for several years, and new this year, they have extended their grant giving to FTC teams.  Application Site - select “Student Competition Teams".  You will need to create an account to fill out the grant request. There are specific requirements, so please read details on the site. Deadline is December 1st but encouraged to apply before September 1st. 

• We don't have information yet on if PG&E team funding will be available. We expect to have this but do not have information as yet for this season.

• Finally, if you are not familiar,  FIRST does have a Team Grant site where they publish grants that they know about

3.  Mentoring -  If your team is interested in being a mentor (and/or finding a mentor) to FLL Challenge, FLL Explore teams or  FTC teams, we would strongly encourage you to add a "TEAM CONTACT" email so that other teams can find you and contact you.  The TEAM CONTACT field is optional and part of the FIRST team dashboard -> Team Profile section. I would encourage you to use a non-personal email address (such as ftcte...@gmail.com) as this email will be published on the public-facing firstinspires.org site.  We are encouraging FTC and FLL teams that contact us about finding a mentor to use the FIRST Team & Event Search page to find teams near them and use the team contact email to reach out.  For those that didn't see the FIRST Mentor Network update from FIRST in July - here is the latest information  (tl;dr - it was shut down).

4. All leagues appear to be full at this time.  If your team is interested in participating in a league, then likely we would have to create a new league(s).  This can only happen if someone is willing to sign up as the League Coordinator.  Reach out to f...@playingatlearning.org if interested.

5. Kickoff is coming! The FIRST Tech Challenge game release will be on Saturday September 6th at 9am on FIRST's YouTube channel. Shortly after the FIRST presentation is completed, there will be a NorCal presentation.  More details coming soon.  

Thanks!