[Pauline Tasci]

For 3476, we have always been a community based team and we find it a huge advantage for us.

We don't limit ourselves to having kids from one school but rather schools and homeschools all over our county. Increasing people in our program, diversity, and knowledge base. I think we are around to 22 schools now.

We also enjoy not being a school team for funding sake. While we did have to apply for 501c3 status as our own entity, it opened us up to larger sponsorship that schools could not moderate. We could choose to accept or decline any sponsorship from any company we wish. Sponsorship is also easier for us to get because schools tend to fight for funding for different programs within their school, we are our own thing.

We also enjoy the fact that we make our own time. We meet earlier than most schools let out because our homeschool kids are available and once that dies down our public school kids take the reigns. Because of this our parents and mentors can have flexible hours.

Being a community based team also gave us closer ties with our community, since we are community based many schools hear about us and flock to us. We make it a point to do a lot of outreach around the community and I personally did less as a school team due to our limited amount of students we could take in (we could only take from our school).

Community teams also offer a larger mentor range since people are coming from schools all over! More people hear about the program and want to help out

The downsides to a community team:
A facility to work in is never a guarantee
Having teachers approve time off for competitions (most are super supportive)

Personally, I was on a school ran team when I was a student and there were so many restrictions that I've never had to deal with as a community team. Being a community team is hard work, it requires a huge push at the start, but I do think it's worth the payoff of in a way "being your own boss"