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Business, Operations & Fundraising·Lesson 11 of 49

Building and Managing a Budget

Create a working team budget, track spending against it, and keep clean financial records.

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Start With a Real Budget Document

A budget is a plan for money: what you expect to bring in and what you expect to spend, laid out before the season. Build it in a shared spreadsheet (Google Sheets works well) with two sections:

  • Income — registration grants, sponsorships, fundraisers, school/PTA support, carryover from last year.
  • Expenses — registration, events, robot parts, tools, travel, apparel, outreach.

Use FIRST's Median Team Budget resource (Rev. Aug. 2025) as a starting point so you do not forget categories.

Budget by Sub-System

Veteran teams break the robot budget down by sub-system (drivetrain, intake, arm, electrical) and give each a cap. This is part of why business tracks "sub-system budgets" and "order schedules." Sub-system caps prevent one mechanism from eating all the money and force engineers to make cost-conscious design choices.

Tracking Spending

A budget is useless if you do not track actual spending against it. Set up:

  • A purchase request process — anyone wanting to buy something fills out a simple form (item, vendor, cost, why), and a finance lead or mentor approves it.
  • A running ledger — every purchase logged with date, vendor, amount, and category.
  • Receipt collection — keep every receipt; you will need them for reimbursements, sponsor reports, and grant accounting.

Order Schedules

During build season, business often manages an order schedule: consolidating part requests from sub-teams, placing orders with vendors like AndyMark, REV Robotics, CTR Electronics, McMaster-Carr, and WestCoast Products (WCP), and tracking shipping so nothing blocks the critical path. Late orders are a top cause of build-season delays, so a disciplined ordering cadence (for example, daily order cutoffs) matters.

Financial Stewardship and Compliance

Many teams operate under a school, a booster club, or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Whatever the structure:

  • Keep team funds separate from personal money.
  • Reconcile your ledger against bank/account statements regularly.
  • Maintain transparency so mentors, the school, and sponsors can see where money goes.
  • Save records for grant reporting (some grants, like NASA's, require an annual report and surveys).

Carryover and Reserves

Aim to end each season with a reserve, ideally enough to cover next year's registration. A team that spends to zero every year lives one bad fundraising season away from folding. Building a reserve is one of the most concrete ways business contributes to sustainability.

Why This Matters for Awards

A documented budget, clean records, and a reserve are evidence of a well-run organization, which is exactly what Impact Award judges and grant reviewers want to see.

Key takeaways

  • Build a shared budget spreadsheet with income and expense sections before the season starts.
  • Cap spending per robot sub-system to prevent one mechanism from consuming the budget.
  • Use a purchase-request process, a running ledger, and receipt collection to track actual spending.
  • Maintain a financial reserve, ideally enough to cover next year's registration, as insurance against a bad fundraising year.

Go deeper

Lesson quiz

Required

Answer all 3 questions correctly to complete this lesson.

1.What does FIRST recommend a team try to do at the end of a season to stay financially sustainable?

2.When planning a budget, why should a team account for in-kind donations and not just cash?

3.What does FIRST's fundraising guidance say about whether sponsorships and grants carry over to the next year?

Answer every question to submit.