How do you share expenses on the team?

The following article takes ideas and discussions shared from the Facebook Group FLL: Share & Learn .

Let the rest of the team know

The key is to make decisions up front and communicate those decisions to the rest of the team. Some teams charge members a set fee for participation in the team. Others share exact costs between every team member. Some teams give discounts or don’t charge if parents coach or provide specific services to the team. Some teams give discounts for siblings. There’s really no guidance from FIRST on these things. So it’s up to you to decide what works for you.

Also decide who will keep the team trophy if your team earns one (only 1 trophy is given per team). Often the lead coach/school will keep it. Sometimes the coach will create smaller LEGO trophies or something to commemorate the season that each student can have.

Coaching fee

If you’re not charging anyone for your services of coaching the team and particularly if you are hosting the team in your home, you could say that keeping the Challenge set, robot kit, any other LEGO parts acquired by the team is your “payment” for your services. Obviously you’d have to work this out with your co-coach. And I would think it would be fair that you would make these things available for the team to use in future seasons, even if you didn’t return as coach. But that’s up to you.

Dividing equally

I set the individual team dues each year as the cost of registration + robot kit + shirts + snacks+ competition fees + trifold board and a small stipend for miscellaneous stuff like binders and notebooks divided by the number of kids on the team. For our team, any parts paid for by team dues or grants reside with me as the lead coach. The robot kits and parts are used for future FLL teams. When the last of my children ages out of FLL and our FLL coaching run comes to an end, we will most likely donate the parts back to a fledgling FLL program.