While we’ve more or less kept up with FCDI related social media, we’re woefully behind on website updates, so we’ll take the opportunity of National Nonprofit Day 2025 – and our 10th anniversary! – to try to make up for a year+ unintential posting gap! We promise more good things have happened in the intervening 20 months since FCDI’s founders were named to the 2023 Florida Trend 500 list.
FCDI Recognition
Since then, FCDI has racked up some additional honors:
- 2025 University of South Florida Good Neighbor Award
- 2025 Nonprofit Lightning Community Hero Award
- 2024 Temple Terrace Uptown Chamber of Commerce Nonprofit of the Year
- 2024 Equity Impact Investments, Phase 1 & 2 cohort member, U.S. Dept of Commerce/NGIN/LISC – 1 of only 24 sites selected nationwide for this 3 yr program
- 2024 Chevron Fab Fellowship Host Site
- 2023 Tampa Bay Business Journal, One Tampa Bay Nonprofit Honoree
- 2023, 2024 & 2025 Best of Florida, Charitable Organizations
FCDI Achievements
Just in 2024-2025 alone, we’ve:
- Hosted a dozen competitive robotics events
- Held 4th annual Young Innovators Challenge, in partnership with the Florida High Tech Corridor, anchoring a key component of 2025 Synapse Summit
- Developed STEAM to Go programming and outreach initiative, with robotics kit loan programs for local educators and other organizations – including BayCare Health Systems to provide enrichment opportunities for staff
- Partnered with Prodigy Cultural Arts to bring multimedia arts experiences to more youth in the University
area - Our in-house Community Youth Robotics teams earned top awards in competitions
- Relaunched Gulf Coast MakerCon
- Expanded our Equity in Entrepreneurship program with the addition of an Entrepreneurship Program Coordinator, Martika Jones, adding new and improved programming in our early-stage entrepreneurship education program
- Launched Entrepreneurship and Machine Shop Credentials program
- Launched our Future Makers initiative supporting mentor guided student-led STEM & entrepreneurship programming
- Launched Community Innovation Collaborative in partnership with Tampa Bay Community Network (TBCN)
- Hosted inaugural Start Up Across America: Uptown Tampa Edition event celebrating area
entrepreneurs - Hosted inaugural 813 Day Made in Tampa Open House at AMRoC, in collaboration with the Tampa Bay Inventors Council, to celebrate homegrown innovation
The FCDI Village
And we couldn’t do any of all these wonderful things without an amazing village of generous time, talent and treasure contributors, from our fabulous and too often unsung Board of Directors members to our amazing AMRoC Fab Lab team to our incredible Volunteers and our dedicated Community Partners, Donors and Sponsors.
If you’d like to help support our cause of empowerment through capacity building across STEAM education, entrepreneurship, and upskilling for trades and career readiness, visit our Donor page to to see how you can get involved by contributing your time or fiscal support.
Stay Connected with our New Quarterly Newsletter!
Want to stay connected? We’re launching an FCDI Quarterly Newsletter to help keep you informed about upcoming events and opportunities. Check out our Fall 2025 issue HERE and sign up for future updates via the button below.