Paul - The school-based teams I've worked with at both the elementary and middle school level worked the same way. The PTA provided startup funds ($500 per team), usually starting with one team and adding more each year or two as interested dictated. This provided for money to by the following materials: a.. LEGO Education Base Set 9797 – Robot, sensors, battery pack, parts b.. LEGO Education Resource Set 9648 – Lots of extra parts c.. NXT-G Software d.. Supplies to build a practice table The costs above are essentially one-time startup costs as these items can be reused each year. I strongly recommend the 9797/9648 combination for teams! Generally the school would loan us a laptop or one of the coaches would loan one of theirs for the team to use. There are also yearly costs which we basically paid out of registration fees collected from each team member. We charged a fee of somewhere between $50 and $65 which (assuming we had 7-8 per team) covered team registration, tournament registration, the field kit (competition mat and LEGO features), and money to buy and print custom T-shirts for the team and coaches. My middle school teams charged a little more than what the costs were in order to build up reserves for equipment upgrade and replacement costs, or possibly adding another team. We now have 3 teams at our old elementary school and 5 at our middle school. Depending on how you slice things you can have multiple teams share practice tables (not at the same time, of course) or buy a site license for the software to cover multiple teams, but this is pretty much what you would do for an individual team. There are certainly some schools in less-affluent areas where the PTA won’t have that kind of money and/or the students can’t pay those kinds of fees. In those cases you need to get creative: do fundraisers, find a corporate donor, etc. Even in affluent areas, some students won’t be able to afford the fee but the PTA usually has money designated to help those kids pay for activities in order to level the playing field for them. I’m sure others out there use different approaches but I hope this helps you. Stuart -----Original Message----- From: Paul Carder Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 10:34 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [VADCFLL-L] Starting up Hi - My son is at Moody middle in Richmond and we are considering starting a team. I am curious if most teams are funded by setting up a non-profit and then seeking sponsorship or if teams typically fund the costs among themselves? Thanks! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your settings, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list". -- VADCFLL administrative announcements are sent via VADCFLL-ADMIN-L. Visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-admin-l.html to subscribe. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your settings, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list". -- VADCFLL administrative announcements are sent via VADCFLL-ADMIN-L. Visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-admin-l.html to subscribe.