New event to help 4-H raise funds - Santa Ynez Valley News

Santa Barbara County 4-H clubs had six weeks to raise funds for a matching grant last year. This year, club supporters have 12 months, and they plan to make that extra time count.

After nearly losing the county’s 4-H clubs to budget cuts, supporters kept the program alive last year with help from a $12,500 Newhall Match Grant Challenge and raised the funds they needed by Sept. 30.

This is the second year the Newhall Foundation is offering the Santa Barbara County 4-H Youth Development Program a matching grant, and the group expects to raise a large chunk — if not all — of the $12,500 with a benefit dinner and silent and live auctions to be held at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 12, at the Santa Maria Elks Lodge, 1309 N. Bradley Road.

The Four Leaf Clover Foundation is organizing the event to lend a hand to the county’s 15 cash-strapped 4-H clubs, which serve more than 700 kids ages 5 to 19. The 4-H program must meet the same Sept. 30 deadline.

“We hope to make it an annual event,” said Mary Anne Christensen, president of the Four Leaf Clover Foundation, a partner organization of 4-H. “It's so unsure what's going to happen with the county and the huge deficit they have facing them. While 4-H has been in the county 75 years, we'd like to see it continue another 75.”

Benefit dinner tickets are $50 per person, and Christensen hopes to sell at least 400. To make a donation or buy tickets, supporters can call Christensen at 344-4064.

Money raised will go toward training and staffing more than 250 adult volunteers in the county, she said.

via news.google.com