The Argosy Foundation is empowering FTC SIM users across North America to take their robotics experience to the next level by providing 140 x $1000 USD grants towards starting a competitive FIRST Tech Challenge Team!
What is FIRST Tech Challenge?
FIRST Tech Challenge teams (up to 15 team members, grades 7-12) are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. Guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles, while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and working as a team.The robot kit is reusable from year to year and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java-based programming. Teams design and build robots, raise funds, design and market their team brand, and do community outreach to earn specific awards. Participants are eligible to apply for $80M+ in college scholarships.
FTC SIM x Argosy Foundation Grant Requirements
- Only North American teams are eligible.
- Only eligible for new rookie teams who have not already paid their registration fee
- Lead Mentor 1 & Lead Mentor 2 must have passed their Youth Protection Screening.
- Teams awarded this grant are not eligible for the need based FIRST rookie team grant offered by FIRST Headquarters.
Only one grant per rookie team. Multiple team members cannot be awarded this grant for the same team.
How to Receive the Grant
Use Blocks or Java code to collect the lightning bolts and complete the levels! Once you have collected them all, your custom code will appear on the achievements page.
- Why should students compete on a FIRST Robotics team? Watch this video to find out.
- Click here to learn more about how to start a team
Use this link to find your local FIRST Tech Challenge Program Delivery Partner to find out more about what the season looks like in your area
- Create/login to your FIRST account
- Watch our step-by-step create a team registration walkthrough video
- Rookie team registration manual
DO NOT complete the payment portion of the registration.
- Lead mentor 1 has to:
- Login to your FIRST account.
- Click your team’s name to display its information.
- Under the “Team Roster/Contacts” column, click the blue “Contact Options” button and select “Manage Contacts” from the drop-down menu.
- At the top of the “Team Contacts/Roster” page click the blue “Invite Contacts” page.
- Under “Contact Type” select the role (e.g. Lead Coach/Mentor 2, Team Administrator).
- Enter the contact’s name and email address.
- Click the box to the left of “I’m not a robot” and wait for the green arrow to confirm completion.
- Select the blue “Send Invitation” button.
- Initiate the Youth Protection Screening
- Lead mentor 1 has to:
- Lead mentor 2 has to:
- Login to their email and accept the invitation.
Create their own FIRST account.
- Initiate Youth Protection Screening from your FIRST Inspires Dashboard by clicking “Youth Protection Screening” on the drop down menu
- You will need the following information:
- Grant Code: Found on the “Achievements” page on ftcsim.org
- FTC SIM Username: This is the email or username used to sign into the account that the grant code was awarded to
Team Number: Your FTC team will be a 5 digit team number that looks like “XXXXX”
- Grants will be reviewed every Tuesday. Applicants will receive an email to confirm that their application has been received and is being processed.
If the grant is approved, the adult who started the registration process will receive an email within 5-7 business days that says the funds have been applied to your account .
While you are waiting for your robot components to ship, you can get familiar with the following resources:
Game Manual 0: A community built resources intended to be a comprehensive guide for rookie or new FTC teams.