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Along with our Student Leadership we have our Parent Leadership. We call them RPM, or Robotics Parents and Mentors. Our RPM program allows parents and mentors of Team 701 to help students take care of the "layered stuff", meaning that Team 701 has full-fledged parent boosters. We meet every first Monday of the month. During this meeting we update all the parents on what the team has been up to. We also decide where to move next and what is going on in the next month.

During the September-December months, parents help the team with fundraising: car washes, recycling, raffle ticket sales, LED lightbulb sales, and especially Bingo (since students aren't allowed to work Bingo). During Build Season, parents help with catering and are reimbursed through RPM funds. Each family on the team is designated a day to come bring lunch/dinner (since we are often there all day). This allows the students to continue working without having to stop to go buy lunch. Parents also help decide which out-of-California regional we should go to and start planning hotels, flight tickets, etc.

There are 4 major positions in RPM, President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Parents who aren't elected to these positions have an opportunity to sign up for committees such as Fundraising, Build Season, Competition Support, and the overall Steering Committee. Most parents do a dual job so things can get done more smoothly.

Some of the fundraisers RPM helps out with are our Car Washes (June-August), Recycling (year-round), Welch's Fruit Snack Sales (October-November), Bingo (year-round), Video Game Tournament (Spring), Raffle Ticket Sales (November-January), and LED Lightbulb Sales (year-round). Our newest fundraiser that we are still testing out to see if it is really worth it is Scrip, which will be year round.

Scrip is a program where you sell gift cards to all sorts of places, Wal-Mart, any gas station, any grocery store, Best-Buy, Target, Radio Shack, Sees, and tons more. When you sell the gift cards your team will get a percentage of the money sold. The percentage is different for all the different places. So instead of just buying the everyday items you need at the grocery store you can buy a gift card and give some money to the team. Once we get this up and running it should be a very profitable fundraiser.

Upcoming Events

February 21, 2012

Ship Day! This is the last day we can work on our robot. We have to bag it up at 3 pm ready for Davis.

March 15-17, 2012

Sacramento regional. The RoboVikes 1st competition! Come and support us at the UC Davis Pavillion!

What else are we doing? Check out our Google Calendar.