Business

The engine of your team. Funding, sponsors, outreach, and the judged awards that turn all of it into advancement.

4 units ·13 lessonsabout 3 hr 19 min total

What you will be able to do

Build a season budget, fund it through sponsors and grants, run outreach that reaches people, and present the whole thing to judges.

Business is what makes the rest possible. It buys the parts, pays the registration, brings in the mentors, and builds the reputation that gets your team taken seriously. It is also judged directly: Connect, Reach, and Sustain are won here, and they carry the same weight as any technical award.

Teams that treat this as an afterthought run out of money in January. Teams that treat it as core work compete for Inspire.

Start here

What a robotics team's business side does — sponsorship, public relations, outreach and social media — and the roles students take on, from FIRST team 5870 League of Logic (5 min).

Course contents

How a team funds its season· From FIRST's own Fundraising Toolkit: building a team fundraising plan. Recorded in 2013 — the plan still holds; the lessons below have today's costs.Watch on YouTube