Outreach that wins Connect and Inspire

Connect and Motivate are different awards

Teams treat "outreach" as one bucket and then wonder why a busy year did not win anything. The criteria point in different directions.

Connect is about reaching into the engineering community: professionals, mentors, sponsors, other teams, and a credible plan for how the team grows and sustains itself. A day spent with a local manufacturing engineer who then mentors your team is Connect.

Motivate is about spreading FIRST and about your team itself: recruiting, running events for younger students, spirit, and how the team works together. A workshop that starts a middle-school team is Motivate.

A team strong in both, with the rest of the evidence behind it, is in Inspire territory. Read how awards actually work for how the whole set fits together.

Outcomes, not attendance

"We ran a workshop for 30 fourth-graders" is an activity. "We ran a workshop for 30 fourth-graders; four joined the middle-school team we helped start, which is now in its second season and has its own mentor" is an outcome.

The test judges apply, whether or not they say it out loud, is: would this have continued if the team had not been there, and did anything change because of it? Design your outreach around being able to answer yes.

What judges see through

• Inflated reach numbers. "We reached 15,000 people" from a stall at a fair does not survive one follow-up question.
• Everything in one month. Six events in March reads as an award attempt, not a programme.
• Photos with no story. A gallery of students holding a robot proves attendance and nothing else.
• Someone else's event. Attending a science fair is not the same as running something at it.
• No named relationship. "We worked with local engineers" with no name, company or ongoing contact reads as a single email.

The kinds of outreach that actually count

1. A recurring programme at a feeder school: the same group, several sessions, with the goal of a team existing at the end.
2. A relationship with a working engineer who reviews your design, visits, or mentors. One real relationship beats ten cold contacts.
3. Helping another FTC team, especially a rookie one. Judges take this seriously and it is the clearest evidence of the culture the awards describe.
4. A demonstration with a follow-up: a library or council event where you collect interest and actually contact people afterwards.
5. Work that keeps running without you: a club you started, a curriculum you handed over, a tool you published. This is the strongest evidence available.

Sponsors are outreach too

The relationship side of Connect overlaps almost exactly with fundraising. A sponsor who gives money and also sends an engineer to look at your drivetrain is both a budget line and a judging entry, and the conversation that produces one produces the other.

Treat them as the same programme rather than two chores. How to get FTC sponsors covers the asking half.

Document it the same day

Outreach evidence decays faster than build evidence, because there is no physical artefact to jog anyone's memory. Six months later you have a date and a vague recollection.

Record five things at the time: the date, who you worked with by name, how many people and who they were, what you actually did, and what resulted or what the next step is. Ten minutes in the car park. Attach the photos then too, while you still know which is which. The documentation workspace holds these alongside the build entries so the portfolio assembles itself.

A year-round plan is four things

You do not need a large programme. You need a small one that runs all season and that you can describe in one sentence each.

• One feeder-school programme, several sessions, aimed at a team existing.
• One professional relationship you maintain, not one you email once.
• One rookie team you help, deliberately.
• One public demonstration with a follow-up list.