FIRST in Texas Grants

By Bhanaviya

Task: Detail the FIRST in Texas Grants and understand how it will improve our business plan

It's the last day of the decade! With a new decade, comes new money, and similar to last year, Iron Reign is supporting 3 sister teams, Imperial Robotics, Iron Core and Iron Golem, the latter two being veteran teams with rookie members. This programmatic growth also comes with a financial curve to overcome. As such, we've applied to the FIRST in Texas grants to find funding for all 4 of our teams. This allocates a total of $2000 for the Iron Reign program, but if Iron Core and Iron Golem are considered rookies due to their new members, then our program can receive around $4000.

This, alongside the $3200 from University of Texas at Dallas for hosting the Townview Qualifier, the $200 GoBilda Product Grant and the the $4000 from DISD STEM Department, which covers our season registration fees, 4 REV FTC kits, and a full practice-field. This brings our total funding up to $11,400 for the Skystone Season . There is no end to how this funding can help with finding new parts, and investing in any machinery like our new CNC Mill. Additionally, since Big Thought our programmatic partner who owns the MXP vehicle, has agreed to invest in building a second, bigger vehicle for the program, this funding can also help us in improving our outreach efforts.

Next Steps

We have also reached out to other companies in our area for increased funding and we hope to expand on our business plan as the new year progresses. In the meanwhile, we here at Iron Reign wish everyone in the FIRST community a happy almost new year!