4 -H Club Reporting

Why Club Reporting is Important

Do you ever wonder why your county cooperative extension office asks you to submit reports - Secretaries Reports, End of the Year Reports, Enrollment Forms, etc, etc?
Because Cooperative Extension is a program supported by federal, state, and local tax dollars, your county Cooperative Extension association is responsible for reporting information about the programs they do and the impacts they have on the communities in your county. Every fall your county Extension office submits an ES-237 report to the State 4-H Youth Development Office at Cornell University, and then the State 4-H Office compiles a state ES-237 report to send to the USDA in Washington DC by November 1.

The national Cooperative Extension System has only one way to systematically compile and take credit for the scope of its efforts in youth development - the ES-237 report. This is a critical part of telling the 4-H Youth Development story - who we are and what we do. Allan Smith, the National 4-H Program Leader, says, "the enrollment report is the principle way the 4-H program gets credit for what it is doing." According to Allan, "every year there are numerous Congressional inquiries for specific information, such as: youth involved in community service, trends in volunteer leadership, trends in subjects participants choose to study, etc." Federal agencies, such as the Departments of Interior and Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Forest Service, monitor 4-H involvement in their subject matter and interest area.

It is very challenging to count everything that goes on in a complex program like 4-H in order to get credit for the great 4-H programs in counties all across the state and to assess the impact on young people. That's why your county office needs your help! It is important that you try to be as accurate and timely as you can be when you are asked to submit enrollment forms and other reports so your county office can follow through on the responsibility they have to provide information to the state level.

One of the areas that seem to be seriously undercounted is community service and service-learning projects. Over the next year we will be working on ways to more accurately track the community service and community action projects taking place in counties. Community service has always been an extremely important part of 4-H and it is critical that we be able to tell people how 4-H members are making important contributions to their communities. We want clubs and the 4-H program as a whole to be known for "building strong and vibrant New York communities" (the new Cornell Cooperative Extension vision statement). We need accurate reporting information to be able to tell that part of our story, as well as all the many other things we do. Please try to accurately reflect your plans to do community service when you fill out enrollment forms. Thanks for your help in telling the 4-H story in New York!

Submitted by Nancy Webster, State 4-H Youth Development Office and Department of Human Development
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page created 12/23/03
Updated 3/1/06