Our Key Partners
Americorps*NCCC
AmeriCorps is a National Service movement with its roots in the Peace Corps and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). AmeriCorps provides teams of volunteers who can greatly assist in leveraging current volunteer pools during the tax season.
Annie. E. Casey Foundation
The Annie E. Casey Foundation launched the National Tax Assistance for Working Families Campaign in January of 2003 to put the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other tax credits to work for low-income families across the nation as part of an asset-building strategy. In more than 45 diverse communities from San Diego to Savannah, to rural North Carolina and New Hampshire, thousands of volunteers are providing families with free assistance in filing tax returns, claiming the EITC and other tax credits, and learning about ways to build assets and financial stability.
AssetBuilding.org
Designed to pull the assets field together in one place--research, policy, news, events, initiatives, AssetBuilding.org is an excellent resource for those interested in learning more about asset building and how it relates to the EITC and free tax preparation services. A project of the New America Foundation.
The Aspen Institute, Economic Opportunities Program
The Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute advances strategies that connect the poor and underserved to the mainstream economy. It provides practical tools, training, and research-based information to organizations that help low-income individuals start a business, find a better job, and build wealth. The program works with funders, policy makers, and leaders of nonprofit organizations on research projects and evaluation initiatives designed to build knowledge and judge the impact of efforts designed to help the poor escape poverty. With support from Annie E. Casey Foundation and in partnership with NCTC, Aspen EOP launched EITCplatform.org in 2007. The platform's purpose is to provide concrete tools that raise the capacity of the EITC field to provide high quality tax preparation and asset building services at greater scale.
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program publishes an ongoing series of research articles that describe the importance of the EITC to neighborhood, local, regional, and state economies and their lower-income workers. Researchers at Brookings have also studied how high-priced tax preparation and refund loan fees reduce the benefits of the EITC at the local level. Their website includes an interactive utility through which users can view and download several years worth of IRS data on EITC receipt, and use of refund anticipation loans, at several levels of geography: zip codes, cities and towns, counties, metro areas, and states.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)
CBPP manages a nationwide effort to engage agencies, employers and community groups in outreach efforts to inform low- and moderate-income families and individuals about the EITC benefits they have earned and how to file the proper tax forms to claim them. CBPP distributes community tax outreach campaign kits, updated each year, which include English and Spanish posters and fliers, fact sheets and a guide to outreach strategy, and has assisted in the creation of hundreds of state and local outreach campaigns across the country. CBPP closely monitors policy developments in the EITC and other tax benefits for families.
CFED
CFED (formerly the Corporation for Enterprise Development) is one of the major informational resources for IDAs. The CFED website has extensive policy background and operational information on IDAs. CFED’s IDA program design handbook can be found on their website. CFED also sponsors an interactive IDA list serve with over 1000 participants.
Children's Defense Fund
The Children's Defense Fund launched a national initiative to ensure children and working families receive tax assistance, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, as well as other benefits for which they are eligible. The CDF Tax and Benefits Outreach initiative seeks to ensure children and poor and near-poor working families improve their living standards, health and opportunity by connecting them and their families with federal and state benefits that already exist. This is accomplished through using the range of existing federal and state programs, which lift significant numbers of children and families out of poverty.
City of Chicago
Mayor Daley's Earned Income Tax Credit Outreach Initiative is an excellent example of how one city - Chicago - successfully organized an EITC Outreach Initiative and linked it to free tax preparation services.
National EITC Outreach Partnership
The National EITC Outreach Partnership was formed in 2004 to provide networking opportunities for national organizations, including federal government agencies, that consider it important to promote Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) outreach, free tax preparation alternatives, and asset development strategies.
National League of Cities
The National League of Cities (NLC), through its Institute for Youth, Education, and Families (YEF Institute), helps municipal leaders take action on behalf of children and families in their communities. One of the core goals of the YEF Institute is to promote and support municipal leadership to connect eligible low-income families to federal and state tax credits and other benefits. To this end, the YEF Institute reaches out to inform city leaders about this opportunity, and provides written materials, workshops, audio conferences and other technical assistance to interested municipalities. NLC’s primary resource on EITC and other benefit outreach is an action kit for municipal leaders, entitled Helping Working Families.
The National Consumer Law Center
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is the nation's consumer law expert, helping consumers, their advocates, and public policy makers use powerful and complex consumer laws on behalf of low-income and vulnerable Americans seeking economic justice. NCLC publishes a series of legal manuals and handbooks for advocates on consumer law. NCLC also has available brochures and newsletters available on its website on a variety of topics, including Refund Anticipation Loans, checking cashing, credit reports, and high cost credit, that can be used to provide education to tax preparation clients.
National Disability Institute, Real Economic Impact Tour (REI Tour)
The National Disability Institute’s Real Economic Impact Tour (REI Tour) is a national, public/private initiative assisting low income persons with disabilities with asset building strategies, free tax preparation and filing assistance. The mission of the Real Economic Impact Tour is to channel asset development strategies, financial education and tax filing assistance into self-directed economic security for low-income working Americans with disabilities and their families. The REI Tour brings together over 500 organizations (federal, state and local) to advance this mission. The Tour works with local communities to provide workers with disabilities access to mainstream financial and tax services and promote self-determination, economic advancement and social well being. In the 2008 filing season REI Tour partners prepared over 90,000 tax returns in 62 cities. Over $81 million in refunds were received by persons with disabilities.
National Employment Law Project
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has advocated for over 30 years on behalf of low-wage workers, the poor, the unemployed, and other groups that face significant barriers to employment and government systems of support. NELP’s Justice for Immigrant and Low-Wage Worker Project seeks to protect and promote employment rights of low wage workers.
Office of the Taxpayer Advocate of the IRS
The Taxpayer Advocate Service helps taxpayers resolve problems with the IRS andrecommends changes to mitigate recurring problems. The TAS is an independent office within the IRS and helps taxpayers in dealing with the IRS where a taxpayer is suffering or about to suffer a significant hardship or where a taxpayer, while not experiencing a hardship, would benefit from the involvement of TAS. In addition, when the TAS identifies procedural problems within the IRS or the tax code that inhibit its ability to help a taxpayer, TAS may propose administrative solutions or legislative changes, as appropriate, to remedy the problems.
Points of Light Foundation
The Points of Light Foundation and Volunteer Center National Network (POLF/VCNN), in partnership with other national organizations, is developing a “Community Based Partnership” model that utilizes volunteers to effectively connect low-income families to EITC Initiatives and other financial programs that will enable EITC recipients to accumulate assets and move out of poverty to self-sufficiency. Locally, an increasing number of Volunteer Centers are taking the lead in expanding local EITC/Asset Development Initiatives through the effective utilization of volunteers.
Stakeholder, Partnership Education and Communication (SPEC)
The Stakeholder, Partnership Education and Communication (SPEC) organization is the outreach and education arm of the Internal Revenue Service's Wage and Investment Division. SPEC's approach to educating individual taxpayers is to leverage partnerships with other national and community organizations, combining resources and goals for a greater impact in the community. SPEC's customer base includes all taxpayers that file individual income tax returns or Form 1040 with special emphasis on efforts to reach the elderly, disabled, low-income and limited English proficient taxpayers. SPEC administers and assists in the implementation of many outreach and education programs including Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE), Understanding Taxes for Students, etc.
Read an explanation of the VITA program, and list of IRS documents important to VITA.
United Way
United Way of America (UWA) is committed to advancing the role of the United Way system in EITC and asset building initiatives across the country. As part of that commitment, the organization is exploring local United Way involvement in community-based EITC campaigns and to create customized tools and resources that will increase the number of local United Ways who engage in EITC outreach, education, and free tax preparation. Currently, more than 100 local United Ways participate in EITC initiatives in their communities and more than 50 percent of those lead or are a core member of their community’s EITC collaborative.
