The following story is from the National Compendium of 4-H Promotion and Visibility on the National 4-H History website — http://4-HHistoryPreservation.com/History/4-H_Promotion/

The Nation’s First Lady, Mrs. Patricia Nixon, and J. C. Penney, meet at the White House to discuss their role in 4-H as honorary 4-H co-chairmen of the National 4-H Club Foundation’s Advisory Council. With them is Barbara Evans, 4-H’er from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Over the past year the history of the private sector and 4-H donors at the national level has been researched and is now up on the National 4-H History Preservation website. For nearly a century National 4-H Council and its two predecessor organizations – National 4-H Club Foundation and National 4-H Service Committee (earlier called the National Committee on Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work) – has secured funding for the support of 4-H programs across America and around the world.

Funds have been generous, coming from large corporations and small businesses, banks, foundations and associations, governmental agencies, state and county 4-H foundations, 4-H leaders’ councils, and from individuals and trusts, totaling well over a million gifts.

This new section attempts to document the most relevant areas of this support from a historical perspective: it is still a “work in progress” as they say, adding information as it is researched and located. It will never be complete. Some records have been lost. In many cases we listed the most significant donations, not attempting to document each and every gift or pledge. It’s for this reason that this new donor support segment has been added to the site in PDF format. This segment is located in the National 4-H History section of the website at

  http://4-HHistoryPreservation.com/History/Donor_Support/National_4-H_Donor_Support.pdf