Quote:
Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi
Could you expand on this a bit? Are you referring to grants?
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First let me start with FRC itself has never given us any problems.
Grants are a part of it, although there are more aspects to it than that.
We operate as an afterschool program and we take anyone who wishes to join regardless of their location or school affiliations. Because of this we have been accused stealing students from schools that have (or wish to have) FRC teams. We do not actively try to take anyone from another team, but we still catch grief if we are chosen over another. We have actually lost more to new school teams than we have taken.
When we applied for the TWC monies we were informed that we would have to get verification of the teens grade levels from their schools. And in fact if they are homeschooled (about a third of the team) that we would need to go to the schools they would have attended for verification. They backed off of this when they were informed it is illegal to require this in Texas (homeschools are considered to be private schools here). Schools are reluctant (rightly so) to release such information to other organizations. Try collecting this from six different ones.
As an Explorer Post we are provided with liability coverage and legal protection. This is normally a provided by a school. I am not sure how other teams that are not under a Scout/school umbrella address this.
We established ourselves as a not-for-profit organization and have had to establish titles and a non-residential address to be able to fill in the blanks for grants, approaching sponsors, establishing websites, ordering parts/tools from some companies and sometimes getting retailers to acknowledge our tax free status.
When you put your group forward as a youth group not directly affiliated with a school you would be surprised how many people treat the group with suspicion. They ask questions to find out what your "agenda" is. I think many assume that you are either a cult or a group of pedophiles (and sometimes both). We had a neighbor near the garage we meet in accuse us of running a sweatshop. As funny as this was it is an excellent example of how many approach us.
Please don't get me wrong, it is not all up hill battles. It is just that many things related to FRC are approached from the assumption that you are operating through a school.