Teams are eligible for the FIRST Impact Award at each Regional or District event at which they compete. District Teams are not eligible to win the FIRST Impact Award at Regional events or inter-district events. Teams will be restricted to earning this award once at each level of competition. In other words, once a team has earned the FIRST Impact Award at a Regional or District event, they may not interview for or earn it again that season at a later Regional or District Event.

FIRST will present a FIRST Impact Award to 1 winning team at each Regional and District event. FIRST Impact Award recipients from District events will go forward to be considered for the FIRST Impact Award at the District Championship. FIRST Impact Award recipients from Regionals and the District Championships will go forward to be considered for the FIRST Impact Award at the FIRST Championship.

* Note: All teams that received a NASA Grant must prepare a FIRST Impact Award submission online through the FIRST Dashboard as part of the grant requirement even though they may be ineligible to win if they fall into one of the below categories.

Ineligible Teams

• Hall of Fame
  Hall of Fame teams are teams that have already earned the Championship FIRST Impact Award and are ineligible to resubmit for consideration for 5 years. 

• First Year Teams
  Because the FIRST Impact Award recognizes sustained excellence and impact, not just a 1 year team effort, it is not possible for any first-year team (including rookie teams and new teams that have been assigned a veteran number) to receive the FIRST Impact Award. First year teams will NOT be considered for the award, are NOT required to provide a FIRST Impact Award video, and will not be interviewed.

The FIRST Impact Award is presented to the team judged to best exemplify the true meaning of FIRST through measurable impact on participants, school, and community at large with emphasis on promoting science and technology through FIRST programs.

While the FIRST Impact Award is about “more than robots”, teams often leverage their robots to enhance their impact on the broader community. For this reason, it is expected teams in contention for the FIRST Impact Award will have built a robot appropriate to the game’s challenges for the season. This does not require the team to have ranked at a certain level during the event but does require teams to put in more than just the minimal effort necessary to field a drivable robot.

The criterion for the FIRST Impact Award has special emphasis on recent accomplishments within the last 3 years. The judges focus on teams’ activities over a sustained period, as distinguished from just the robot design and build period.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is not about machines; it is about the experience of people working together toward a shared goal. Documenting and preserving your team’s FIRST experience becomes an important component of the over-all FIRST experience.

• Each executive summary is limited to 500 characters, including spaces and punctuation (with an exception of the last question).

• The Essay is limited to 10,000 characters, including spaces and punctuation.

• To help standardize FIRST Impact Award judging, FIRST has developed a definition list for terms commonly used by teams. Teams are responsible for policing their own choice of words. Click here to see the FIRST Impact Award Definitions. 

  • Please note that teams are encouraged to show their FIRST Impact Award Documentation Form (editable word doc here) to the judges during the interview. Note that this is not a required form (i.e. you can still be eligible without this form) but providing it shows the Judges that your activities are well planned and documented.

• A student who is designated as the Award Submitter or lead mentor 1 or 2 can submit the FIRST Impact Award submission

  • The lead mentor 1 or 2 for each team can assign up to two (2) student award submitters in the FIRST Dashboard. Check out the Instructions to assign an Awards Submitter if you need assistance. 

• In preparing this submission, bear in mind that students, engineers, teachers, community, school, sponsors, families, and other supporters are all integral parts of your team experience. Your submission needs to clearly convey the factors outlined below.

• Submitters must enter information, save it, and return to the site to edit the FIRST Impact Award submission until they are ready to finalize it for final judging. All entries must be finalized and submitted by the deadline. No entries will be accepted or altered after the deadline.

• The team must submit their FIRST Impact Award submission, in English, through the FIRST Dashboard and enter the following required information. Team Number, Name, and Location are automatically included and provided to the judges. 

• Teams will not be able to submit the application without agreeing to the FIRST Impact Award Video Consent & Release of Rights Form in the submission portal. No entries will be accepted or altered after this deadline.

• In addition to the online submission, teams must provide judges at the event with a video on a USB. The team may show this video during their interview but are not required.

Executive Summaries

• Describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants within the last 3 years. This can include but is not limited to percentages of those graduating high school, attending college, in STEM careers, and in FIRST programs as mentors/sponsors.

• Describe your community along with how your team addresses its unique opportunities and circumstances.

• Describe the team’s methods, with emphasis on the past 3 years, for spreading the FIRST message in ways that are effective, scalable, sustainable, and creative. How does your team measure results?

• Please provide specific examples of how your team members act as role models within the FIRST community with emphasis on the past 3 years.

• Describe your team’s initiatives to Assist, Mentor, and/or Start other FIRST teams with emphasis on activities within the past 3 years.

• Beyond starting teams, what initiatives have you done to help inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators? What results have you seen from your efforts in the past 3 years?

• Describe the partnerships you've created with other organizations (teams, sponsors, educational institutions, philanthropic entities, etc.) and what you have accomplished together with emphasis on the past 3 years.

• Describe your team's efforts in the past 3 years to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion within your team, FIRST, and your communities.

• Explain how you ensure your team and the initiatives you have created will continue to run effectively for the foreseeable future.

• Describe your team’s innovative strategies to recruit, retain, and engage your sponsors within the past 3 years.

• Highlight one area in which your team needs to improve and describe the steps actively being taken to make those improvements.

• Describe your team’s goals to fulfill the mission of FIRST and the progress you have made towards those goals.

• Briefly describe other matters of interest to the FIRST Judges, including items that may not fit into the above topics. The judges are interested in learning about aspects of your team that may be unique or particularly noteworthy.

• (OPTIONAL) Please use this space to ask 1 question to your FIRST Impact Award Judges which will be answered after each event with feedback from the judges (250 characters maximum). Note: Questions asking what is required to win the award will not be answered. 

Essay

• The essay portion of the FIRST Impact Award submission provides teams an opportunity to describe their activities and achievements in narrative form. While Judges encourage creativity of expression, the essay must clearly deliver information and facts describing what the team is about. Teams are encouraged to use some of this space to explain how their team is structured and the number of mentors and students on the team. The essay should avoid merely duplicating information provided in the executive summary questions. However, it is appropriate for the essay to further expand on those responses and provide more in-depth discussion of notable team achievements.

• The most effective essays are characterized by an overview of team activities during the last 3 years, followed by in-depth discussion of notable activities during the most recent 12-18 months. Judges use the essay to get a big picture view of the team and to learn about achievements that may be unique and noteworthy.

Teams who have successfully submitted for the FIRST Impact Award will be randomly assigned to an interview time slot at each eligible event. Once the interview schedule has been posted, Pit Admin will make an announcement and teams can see the slot to which they are assigned. Some teams may need to request to change time slots. In order to do so, the team must find another team who is willing to switch. Both teams will then go to Pit Admin and request the time change. Pit Admin is the only group who can approve the change. Pit Admin will alert the Judge Advisor or Judge Advisor Assistant.

• Teams must provide a video to the FIRST Impact Award Judges during the interview.

• FIRST Impact Award interviews are limited to 12 minutes total; up to 7 minutes for a presentation by the team (which includes set-up) and the remaining time (5 minutes) is for question and answers led by the judges. If teams use less time than 7 minutes for their presentation, judges may use the remaining minutes (out of 12) for Q and A. To ensure consistency, it is very important that all interviews are no longer than 12 minutes.

  • Interviews are conducted in English (with the exception of teams interviewing at events in China, Chinese Taipei, Israel, Mexico, Quebec, and Turkey).

  • Teams needing a translator or sign-language interpreter may include an additional person to act as that translator/interpreter. The translator/interpreter does not need to be a team member. For these teams, the duration of the interview is increased by up to 5 minutes – up to 2 minutes for the presentation and up to 3 minutes for the Q&A portion.

• No more than 3 student (pre-college) team members are allowed to present information or answer questions from the Judges. One adult Team Mentor may attend the interview as a silent observer and later provide feedback to the team, but the mentor is not allowed to provide any assistance during the interview. We highly encourage this silent observer in order to provide timely feedback to the team based on observations and noting judges’ questions. This feedback can be very valuable in helping teams hone their skills. Teams will not be marked down for having a mentor present. If the mentor provides any assistance during the interview, the Judges should respectfully remind the mentor of the rule.

Note: These mentors are not allowed to record video or audio or take pictures during the interview.

Exception: If necessary, the adult mentor may provide translation services for students needing foreign language or sign language translation. This person does not count as the adult mentor observer.