Terms

Who runs FTC Pitfund

FTC Pitfund is run by volunteers from FIRST® Tech Challenge Team 31579 Exodius. It is free to use. It connects FTC teams with companies that want to sponsor robotics teams.

FTC Pitfund is not affiliated with or endorsed by FIRST®. FIRST® and FIRST® Tech Challenge are trademarks of their owner, used here only to describe who the site is for.

Who can use it

• You must be 18 or older. There are no student accounts. Coaches, mentors and parents who handle sponsorship sign up for a team; employees sign up for a company.
• Only join a team you actually coach or mentor, and only represent a company you work for or are allowed to speak for.
• You can belong to one team or one company at a time.
• Before a team can pitch, we check that it is real and that you are part of it, which is why we ask for a screenshot of your FIRST® Dashboard. Only our admins ever see it.
• You sign in with a 6-digit code sent to your email. Keep access to that email account secure.
• You confirm you are 18 or older and accept these terms when you create your account, join a team or company, or accept an invite.

Shared team and company accounts

Each team and each company has one shared account, and everything a member does is done on behalf of the whole team or company. One member owns the account — whoever created it, until they hand it on. Everyone else is an editor.

• Only the owner can invite people, remove members, and hand ownership to someone else. An owner can't leave until they have handed ownership on.
• Everything else, both roles can do: edit the profile, upload files, and write, send or withdraw pitches (or answer them, for a company).

Only let in people you trust — an editor can speak for your team or company.

What FTC Pitfund does

• Teams set up a public team page with a one-line summary and a sponsorship deck (one PDF, up to 5 pages and 10 MB), then pitch companies by answering each company’s own questions.
• We review every team and every company before they reach the app. Neither is visible to the other side until we approve it.
• We review every pitch before the company sees it. We may send a pitch back for changes or decline to pass it on.
• When a company marks a pitch Interested, both sides receive each other’s contact details and continue the conversation directly. A company may also answer Not a fit.
• One pitch per team, per company, per season. A season runs from September 1 to August 31. If you withdraw a pitch before the company answers, you can pitch that company again the same season. A pitch we declined or the company marked Not a fit still counts.

What FTC Pitfund doesn’t do

• We never handle money. Any sponsorship, donation, equipment or other support is agreed and delivered directly between the team and the company, on terms they set.
• We don’t guarantee sponsorship. Approving a pitch means it meets our standards, not that the company will say yes. Companies decide for themselves.
• We don’t check every claim a team or company makes. A verified checkmark means we looked into the team, not that we vouch for everything it says. Do your own checks before you commit to anything.
• We don’t provide messaging, contracts, tax receipts or legal advice.

Your responsibilities

• Give accurate information about yourself, your team or your company, and keep it up to date.
• Only upload decks, logos and text you have the right to share. Get permission from everyone shown in photos in your deck, and from a parent or guardian for anyone under 18. You confirm this when you upload a deck.
• Don’t pretend to be another person, team or company, or suggest a connection that doesn’t exist.
• Don’t send spam, harass anyone, upload anything harmful or illegal, or use contact details you receive for anything other than the sponsorship conversation.
• Don’t try to break, overload, scrape or get around the security of the site.

Your content

You keep ownership of what you upload. You give FTC Pitfund permission to store it, show it and share it as the site describes: team pages and decks are public, pitches go to the company you chose after review, and contact details go to the other side on a match. This permission ends when the content is deleted, except for copies the other side already received.

Reports, removal and suspension

Anyone can report a team page that looks wrong, misleading or inappropriate, and we read every report. We may edit or remove content, decline pitches, reject or suspend a company, or suspend a person or team that breaks these terms or puts others at risk, with or without notice. If something of yours is here that shouldn’t be, or you think we got a decision wrong, email ftcexodius@gmail.com.

Leaving

You can delete your account from the Account page at any time. If you own your team or company account, hand ownership to another member first; if you are its only member, invite someone else or email ftcexodius@gmail.com to close it. The Privacy Policy explains what is deleted and what stays.

No warranty

FTC Pitfund is a free, volunteer-run service provided as it is. It may have bugs, be unavailable at times, or delay emails. To the extent the law allows, the people who run FTC Pitfund are not responsible for any loss that comes from using it, including a sponsorship that doesn’t happen or doesn’t go as agreed.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the site changes. We will change the date at the top, and for important changes we will also tell you in the app or by email. If you keep using FTC Pitfund after a change, you accept the new terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms: ftcexodius@gmail.com.