Volunteer & Mentor Opportunities

Tech and Non-Tech Mentors Needed

If you have a skill — any skill — we have a role for you.

Read this in the calmest, most matter-of-fact voice you can: we can’t do this without you. Not as a sales pitch, not as a guilt trip — literally as a structural fact. FIRST has designed the entire program so that a successful team has to have community engagement and adult support baked in.

A team without mentors loses on Day One. A team with the right mentors goes to State.

If you have a skill, we have a role.

You don’t need an engineering degree. You don’t need to know what a Mecanum wheel is. Half the roles below are non-technical. Pick one and reach out.

Technical Mentor Roles

If your background is in engineering, programming, manufacturing, or any hands-on building trade, here’s where you can plug in directly:

Technical mentor role categories: Mechanical and Electrical, Programming and Game Strategy, CAD and 3D Printing

Mechanical mentor — chassis, drivetrains, manipulators, lead screws, gear ratios, structural design.
Electrical mentor — wiring, REV / goBILDA control hubs, motor controllers, batteries, soldering safety.
Programming mentor — Java, autonomous routines, tele-op, code reviews, debugging.
CAD mentor — Onshape (or whatever the team uses), parametric design, assemblies, drawings.
3D printing mentor — printer setup, slicing, materials, troubleshooting.
Drive coach — driver practice, match strategy, radio etiquette, queueing.
AI / computer-vision mentor — vision pipelines, ML model training, sensor fusion.
Game-strategy mentor — analyzing the season’s game, scoring optimization, alliance picks.
Tools / safety mentor — supervising drill press, soldering iron, hot glue gun, etc., and running the safety briefing every meeting.

Non-Technical (Right Brain) Mentor Roles

— Just as Critical

This is where most adults assume they have nothing to offer. They’re wrong. Half the points an FTC team scores at judging come from work that has nothing to do with the robot. We need:

Non-technical mentor role categories: Communications including notebook and media, Business including sponsors and finance, Operations including logistics and outreach

Engineering notebook / portfolio mentor — reviewing student writing, organizing the seasonal portfolio, hitting rubric items.
Public speaking / judging-prep mentor — running practice judging interviews, working on poise, eye contact, and clear answers.
Marketing & branding mentor — team identity, logo work, swag design, brand voice.
Photography / videography mentor — capturing build season, events, and tournament footage for the blog and social media.
Social media / blog mentor — coaching students on regular posting cadence, content planning, captions.
Website mentor — keeping the team site current; we use WordPress.
Sponsor outreach mentor — helping students draft sponsor letters, follow-up emails, and pitch decks.
Fundraising mentor — events, grant applications, crowdfunding campaigns.
Finance / accounting mentor — books, monthly reconciliation, Quicken coaching, budget reviews.
Legal / non-profit mentor — helping us through Florida LLC formation and 501(c)(3) registration.
Insurance mentor — obtaining and renewing liability insurance.
Travel coordinator mentor — hotels, transportation, meal logistics for tournaments (and a Houston trip if we advance to Worlds).
Outreach / STEM-promotion mentor — coordinating with schools, libraries, festivals; running demos.
Mental health / team-culture mentor — keeping kids healthy and connected across a long, sometimes stressful season.
Meals / snacks coordinator — yes, really. Long build days run on food.
Chaperone — just be there. Two-deep adult presence is a Youth Protection Program requirement.

FIRST Needs Your Help Too — Event Volunteers

Beyond our team, the FTC tournaments themselves run on volunteers. Every League Meet, every League Tournament, the Florida State Championship, and FIRST Worlds are all powered by adults who give a Saturday or two each season to make the events work. Our League covers the Florida Panhandle from Tallahassee to Pensacola, so most events are within driving distance.

FIRST publishes the full role catalog and training on the FIRST Training portal — FTC Event Volunteers catalog. Common roles:

FTC Event Volunteer roles: Match Operations including Referee and Scorekeeper, Team Support including Pit Administration and Volunteer Coordinator, and the Judging Panel

Referee / Head Referee — observe matches, call penalties, track match status. (Certification required.)
Scorekeeper / Lead Scorekeeper — operate the scoring software, enter match results. (Certification required.)
Judge — interview teams, evaluate engineering portfolios, select award recipients. Must be 3+ years removed from any team and cannot be a parent/coach of a team at the event.
Field Support / Field Reset — reset the field between matches, place game elements, support the referees.
Queueing — line teams up for their matches and get them to the field on time.
Robot Inspector — verify each team’s robot meets size, weight, and safety rules at check-in.
Pit Administration — team check-in, swag distribution, pit-area logistics.
Volunteer Coordinator — the person who organizes the people who organize everyone else.
Emcee / Game Announcer — keep the energy up, narrate matches, run the audience experience.
Photographer / Videographer — capture event content for the FIRST community.

Quick Summary: Event Volunteer Training

Becoming an FTC Event Volunteer is straightforward and free:

Five steps to become an FTC Event Volunteer: 1 Create FIRST Account, 2 Apply to a Role, 3 Complete YPP Training, 4 Complete Role Training, 5 Show Up at the Event

Create a FIRST account at firstinspires.org if you don’t already have one.
Apply to a role through your FIRST Dashboard. You can volunteer at a single event or commit to multiple events across the season.
Complete the Youth Protection Program (YPP) training and screening — same as for team mentors. Roughly 40–50 minutes of short videos plus a background check.
Complete role-specific training from the FIRST Training portal. Each role has its own manual and a series of training videos. Time commitment varies: 30 minutes for simpler roles like Field Reset; 90+ minutes for Referee or Scorekeeper, which require certification quizzes.
Show up at the event — usually a one-Saturday commitment per event, with breakfast, lunch, and a volunteer T-shirt provided.

New to volunteering? Start with Field Reset or Queueing — both are friendly entry points with minimal training, and most lifelong FTC volunteers got their start there.

What FIRST Asks of Every Adult

Every regular adult on a team or at events will need to complete FIRST’s Youth Protection Program — a roughly 40–50 minute video training plus a background screening. It’s standard for any adult-with-kids program and it’s non-negotiable. We’ll walk you through it.

How to Volunteer with Our Team

Email us at team@fc-robotics.org with the role (or roles) that interest you. We’ll set up a quick call, walk through the time commitment, and get you started. There’s no minimum hours requirement, no formal application process, and no obligation to commit to anything more than a single meeting until you’re ready.

What there is: an enormous return on the time you put in. Mentoring an FTC team — or volunteering at an FTC event — is one of the most rewarding things an adult can do. The kids do remarkable work. Your job is just to be the steady hand in the room.

Reach Out.

One email is all it takes to start. Pick a role above and let us know you’re interested.

Email the Team
View FIRST Volunteer Roles