I spend most of my free time on my FIRST Robotics team. http://www.usfirst.org/

Dean Kamen founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in order to try and increase interest in science and technology among school children. It does this by sponsoring robotics competitions at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

Its oldest competition is the FIRST Robotics Competition, which is the one that my team participate in. Every year, FIRST releases a game that we have six weeks to design and build a robot to compete in.

It's basically trying to be an alternative to varsity sports teams, where instead of playing a game kids do engineering, and build technical skills before college (and it helps a lot in college admissions).

Insofar as it does that, it raises the sanity waterline, but not to a particularly high level. It does however, raise it for a lot of people.

It's not really a rationality organization per se, but it might be of interest to the community.

Some statistics about their total support from their site:

• 248,000+ students

• 22,475 teams

• 20,675 robots

• 66,000+ mentors/adult supporters

• 33,000+ event volunteers

Interesting things:

• They've been very successful at getting sponsors, with more than 3,500 participating. FIRST has about $33,000,000 in operating expenses. But that doesn't reflect all of the money that it pulls in because of how many companies directly sponsor teams or provide scholarships.

• It has a very decentralized structure, easy to scale

• Dean Kamen does a few other things like technophilic TV shows and inventing

If anyone wants to hear more about it, just ask or something. I believe Randaly is also involved.