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FIRST Washington ▸ News ▸ City Shaper Coach Email Volume 4- 7/16/19 Grant Information! Important!
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    • City Shaper Coach Email Volume 4- 7/16/19 Grant Information! Important!

    Greetings Coaches! Welcome to CITY SHAPER!

      If you are new to this email this is the place where you will find all of the Washington specific FIRST LEGO League information. Coaches and team administrators in the FIRST system for the CITY SHAPER season will be added weekly. Starting this season, every email from me will be numbered. That number lets you know which update it is, if you miss an update you can find it on our website. 

    I have 2 items for you today-

    1.       Grant Updates! Important! Please Read!

    2.       Team Registration at firstinspires.org open

     

    Grant Information!

    FIRST Washington has a number of competitive grant opportunities for teams and we encourage your team to apply! All of these grants are made possible by generous donors, with emphasis going toward assisting disadvantaged teams in need. With FIRST Washington’s commitment to bringing FIRST programs to more communities and schools, it is our goal to help teams to be self-sustaining within three years. If you need help in building out your team sustainability plan and fundraising training, please let us know. We want to see you be successful in not only programming and building a robot, but building strong business and team collaboration skills!

    1.       FIRST Washington grant: Open Now. Deadlines are: FIRST LEGO League September 19, FIRST Tech Challenge September 19, and FIRST Robotics Competition October 3, 2019.  To apply: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/8e944e032ad74f98864853f98fa03a44.

     

    2.       OSPI, iGrants: Open Now. Deadlines September 19 for FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge Teams and October 10 for FIRST Robotics Competition. This generous grant is a building grant for Washington teams only who must compete in FIRST Washington competitions during the 2019-2020 school year. Teams must be public school-based or sponsored by the school. To complete the grant, please work with your school finance office or CTE, and they must log in under the school, not the district for these are building level grants. FIRST LEGO League: form 605, FIRST Tech Challenge: form 606, FIRST Robotics Competition: form 424.

    3.       Boeing Grant: Opening mid-July-August. Teams who have a Boeing employee are eligible to have their employee apply for a grant through Boeing. This grant is managed by Boeing and it is a very generous grant to help offset FIRST registration fees for teams. FIRST LEGO League & FIRST LEGO League Jr applications will open mid-July. FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRSTRobotics Competition application will open in August.  Active Boeing employees are encouraged to join the Boeing FIRST Enterprise inSite group (FIRST @ Boeing – Enterprise). Any and all relevant updates will be communicated through the Boeing FIRST Enterprise inSite in the future.

     

    4.       SPEEA: Open Now. Deadline: August 15th. If your team has a SPEEA mentor, encourage them to complete the grant application. If you need assistance, FIRST Washington has developed a grant template.

    Other opportunities:

     

    5.       Microsoft: Teams who have a Microsoft employee involved as a coach/mentor not only will benefit tremendously in building their programming, computer science and engineering skills and soft skills, Microsoft will generously match their hours of volunteering with your team at $25/hour. Many FIRST Washington teams leverage this generous partnership and we encourage you to go find a Microsoft employee and invite them to your team!

    –

    Registration is Now Open!

    Registration for new and returning teams is open now!  Registration closes when our region reaches capacity for the season, so register early!  If capacity is available, registration will stay open until the end of September or early October (but is not guaranteed to be open that late).

    Returning coaches can log into your account at: www.firstinpires.org.  There you will have the opportunity to register your teams for another year.  Please look at the notifications in the upper right corner and take care of the consent and release and required profile updates.

    New coaches can start a team at this link: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll/start-a-team

    *A note on registration. They did add the option to opt out of the challenge set for those registering multiple teams that don’t need multiple sets, but there is no way to buy the challenge set at a later time. If you opt out you WILL NOT be able to go back and order one separately.  

     

    Upcoming Events/Dates

    • August 1: Challenge Released
    • December 7&8: Qualifier Tournaments
    • December 14&15: Qualifier Tournaments

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