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FIRST Brand & Marketing Hub

Strategic Partnerships

FIRST collaborates with leading brands, organizations, and innovators to create experiences that inspire, educate, and engage. Built around shared values and a commitment to expanding opportunity, these partnerships help connect new audiences to FIRST while delivering meaningful impact for students, communities, and partners alike.
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FIRST RISE Powered by Star Wars: Force for Change

For the 2020 season, FIRST partnered with Disney and Lucasfilm to encourage participants to see themselves not only as engineers and innovators, but as forces for change capable of making a meaningful impact in the world around them. Together, they launched FIRST RISE powered by Star Wars: Force for Change, a season-long initiative supported by original content, educational experiences, and audience engagement opportunities designed to inspire creativity, innovation, and problem-solving both on and off the field. 

To support the initiative, FIRST, Disney, and Lucasfilm created a series of original experiences that connected students directly with the people behind one of the world's most recognizable franchises. A four-part Galactic Builders digital series featured engineers, designers, filmmakers, and creative technologists from Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and Walt Disney Imagineering, offering students an inside look at the careers and technologies that power the Star Wars universe while demonstrating the many ways STEM and creativity intersect. 

The partnership also invited students and fans worldwide to participate in the Build My Droid challenge, where the winning design was brought to life by Lucasfilm and later appeared in the Disney+ series "Obi-Wan Kenobi."

 

FIRST Corporate Partnerships: Qualcomm

FIRST has created a global network of supporters dedicated to expanding access to STEM education and empowering the next generation of innovators.

Few partnerships illustrate that approach better than Qualcomm. For more than 20 years, Qualcomm and FIRST have worked together to create opportunities for students through STEM education, mentorship, volunteerism, and workforce development initiatives. As the needs of students and industry have evolved, so too has the partnership — demonstrating how sustained collaboration can create meaningful impact over time.
Learn More
FIRST Championship Qualcomm

FIRST Corporate Partnerships: John Deere

For more than 15 years, FIRST Strategic Partner John Deere has been a deeply valued partner in advancing the FIRST mission, recognizing access to hands-on FIRST robotics programs builds the technical skills critical to careers in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and technology.

In 2026, the company announced a three-year grant totaling $2.7 million to FIRST to reach more than 9,000 youth in communities across the globe. A top tool for employee engagement, more than 500 John Deere employees serve as FIRST mentors, coaches, and event volunteers--including senior product manager and FIRST alum Sarah Heimlich, who shared her FIRST journey and work at John Deere in the award-winning FIRST brand campaign, "Get Anywhere."
See Sarah's FIRST & John Deere Story

 

Partner with FIRST Today

From brand collaborations and sponsorship opportunities to worforce development and community engagement initatives, we'd love to explore how we can create impact together. 
Contact FIRST