[Chris_Elston]

I am with Wendy on this as well. Contact your local Extension Office. Basically for us, Indiana 4-H is an extension of Purdue University. If we have a grant that must go to a school, then we pass it through Purdue's office. They process the grant for us. We have and are allowed to use the 501c3 and we also have our own FEIN number. I can't thank 4-H enough for what we have, what they provide for us in Indiana. I understand each state is going to be different. I know some people will argue me to death...I won't mention names...that they would not do FIRST Robotics without school support or a teacher sponsor, but I can tell you, that there of course are pluses and minuses for each. For us, we can control our own team and not have to worry much about "approvals" from a school board etc...I think that's a big plus. Also we have a large membership base of really, really super smart home school kids. Home school kids that our high school would not allow them nor any other kids from any other high school on their school property. So having a community based org like 4-H allows no limits to the kids we have access too county wide. I think that's great. Also think about this...4-H in our county has buildings that go unused in the winter, so we have access to those buildings when there are no normal 4-H clubs like goats, horses, etc meeting during the winter time frame. The timing works out good for us.