FDescriptionThis award celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit and recognizes a team which has developed a comprehensive business plan in order to define, manage, and achieve the team’s ongoing objectives. This team displays entrepreneurial enthusiasm as well as demonstrates the vital planning and business skills to ensure a self-sustaining program. To be eligible, the team must bring a Summary Business Plan (Details below) to each event and be able to explain to the judges how the plan helps to ensure the team’s continued participation in FIRST. This summary business plan must be turned into the judges during the pit interviews.
Guidelines
The team has a clear concept or approach to building their team and operates as a cohesive system.
They proactively identified and managed risks, acquiring the assets to effectively deal with adversity as well as unexpected events.
They understood the goals of the competition and the mission of FIRST.
This summary business plan must be turned into the judges during the pit interviews.
A team spokesperson must be able to explain:
How their business plan is organized
How the team makes decisions and divides their workload
How the team keeps students, mentors, and sponsors actively engaged>
How they recruit and train future team members
How they celebrate success and document lessons learned to prevent repeating mistakes
Summary Business Plan: (3 pages max + 3 pages of appendices)
Mission Statement: Please briefly indicate what you believe to be the “driving engine” of your team. Your mission should be clear and concise. It should represent to any reader exactly what your team strives to accomplish.
Team History & Growth: Please briefly highlight where your team is from and how your team has grown and/or manage turnover with emphasis on the past 2 years.
Organizational Structure: Please detail how your team operates and how you continue to grow your program with emphasis on the next 2 years.
Risk Analysis: Please describe how your team deals with risks and opportunities. Also describe your team’s strengths.
Marketing: How do you get your team/brand out there?
Financials: Please include information on team finances (include details on income statement and balance sheet as an appendix). How is your team funded and how do you budget? Please also briefly highlight your relationship with your sponsors and how you recognize them.
Appendix:
You are allowed 3 pages maximum to include things like:
Financial Statement - income statement and balance sheet
Organizational Chart
Any other supporting documentation
Note: The page limit is meant to mean 3 pages either single sided or 1 ½ if you want to print double sided. This page limit is the same for the summary business plan and the appendices but all should be given in one cohesive document. The addition of a cover sheet will not count against your page limit as long as it is used to only identify your team and the purpose of the document (i.e. Business Plan). EligibilityTeams are eligible to win the Entrepreneurship Award at any event in which they participate.