Letter From IRS

Today we had our monthly board meeting, and Arno came in with a sad look on his face & a sad tone in his voice. Earlier this week we had received a letter from the IRS. He starts reading it to us...

We got the 501(c)3 status! We are now officially a nonprofit organization! Now we can start going after lots of grants! YAY!!!

Can you tell I'm happy about this? This is a major milestone. We successfully jumped through the hoops, and now there's more paperwork to fill out. Well, there would have been more paperwork to fill out regardless, but having that official little number 501(c)3 and our code that goes with it, will help a lot.

Oh, yeah, the code - there were several strings of numbers, & we aren't sure which is the relevant one, but we'll figure it out, & we can give it to people and organizations who give us money. But most importantly, there are now organizations willing to consider giving us money which wouldn't even talk to us before.

*Happy Dance*, or as my husband said, "Party time!"

Friday Surprise

This week I was substituting for James at Thomas Edison Charter School, while he was in D.C. After school, I met with Neil, Arno, & Levi Arno had the surprise. Before Jr Engineering shut down, he had contacted Energy Solutions about possible funding. A couple of weeks ago, he contacted them again, to let them know that Jr Engineering had been shut down, and that we are working to continue the mission of bringing hands-on science education to elementary schools in the intermountain west. The main thing he wanted was to let them know how to contact us. They sent us $1,000!

Thank you, Energy Solutions!

We took a picture of the four of us with the check, which will be posted on our website as soon as I get the file from Arno.

My current task is to track down the rumor that as part of the International Year of Astronomy, each state would be able to get a StarLab portable planetarium. No one knows where the one for Utah is. We think it should have gone to Weber State University, but Stacy Pallin, the astronomy professor there, hasn't heard anything about it. So now I need to try and track down where the ones for Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, & Wyoming were supposed to go. Since we are planning on serving students in all five states, we might as well try to get resources from all five as well.