New Life, New Mission, Same Faith
May, 2007
Incorporated in 1997, New Life Corporation (NLC) is a faith-based nonprofit organization which was founded by one of the eldest churches in the city of New Haven. The first board of New Life was constituted of the church pastor, parishioners, elected officials, and community members. While the nonprofit retains a strong relationship to the church, it has added new members with different experiences, and professional qualifications. Executive Director Ariel Martinez is the son of the church pastor who founded NLC.
The church’s reason for starting the non-profit was its concern for the continuing decay of the blighted housing stock surrounding the church in its Hill neighborhood. To address this problem NLC was initially incorporated as a housing development organization. After a number of years, NLC had some success in assisting homeowners in accessing city grants to perform needed repairs in their homes, however, it was never able to flourish into a housing developer. As such, it changed its mission and direction to work with the Family Economic Security (FES) model four years ago.
New mission
To increase the economic security of low and moderate income families living in New Haven and other low and moderate income communities in the region through services in workforce development, financial education, and asset-building.
Family Economic Security programs combine the thinking of both conservatives and progressives about the value of work and the empowerment of low-income people and their ability to improve their lives. Within this concept, the public and private sectors both have a role to play in assisting family and community.
Family Economic Security is made up of three parts:
- jobs that are readily available, provide health care, dental and disability benefits, and pay enough to support a family;
- government programs like food stamps, HUSKY child healthcare and child care subsidies that supplement income when needed; and
- opportunities for asset-building like homeownership, developing savings through Individual Development Accounts (IDA’s) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and financial education.
Coalition for Working Families
In 2004, to implement their new mission and specifically their Volunteer Individual Tax Assistance (VITA) program, NLC assembled the Coalition for Working Families (CWF) which at the time consisted of 8 partners (churches and nonprofits). Today, the CWF has grown to over 30 groups which include state and municipal government. While a $250,000 grant from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives got it started, only 15 percent of its funding now comes from the White House. The rest comes from funders such as the City of West Haven, foundations such as
New Alliance Foundation
and The Community Foundation of Greater New Haven,
businesses such as
Yale-New Haven Hospital, and state funding from the Connecticut Department of Social Services, and the Connecticut Department of Labor.
Community tax preparation
Every year NLC and CWF partners recruit over 100 volunteers to run the VITA program. Some volunteers are CPAs, and others are students in college accounting programs. Because these students have expertise in accounting and need less training, New Life is working with local colleges to boost their numbers. However about 80% of the volunteer force comes directly from community residents; many of whom have had their taxes prepared in previous years by VITA volunteers.
As NLC’s staff is bilingual (Spanish/English), they serve a growing population of Hispanic who make up about 70% of their clients. In Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, Hispanics are the currently the majority of the population. Within this growing Hispanic population New Life found that many were in need of obtaining an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). NLC applied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to become an ITIN Acceptance Agent and has served an estimated 668 immigrants in the past three years. Recently they received a capacity building grant from Hispanics in Philanthropy which they will use to expand their certification in order to assist immigrants with the vast number of issues they are confronted with in trying to achieve citizenship.
Another capacity building grant recently enabled it to purchase the Efforts to Outcome (ETO) case management software, which will become their main client database for the VITA program as well as their other services.
During the 2007 tax filing season, New Life completed 2,059 federal and state of Connecticut returns. Today, NLC runs the largest VITA program in the Greater New Haven area. Executive Director Ariel Martinez is very pleased with their 55 percent increase in returns over last year. He says that providing these services has been tough on staff and volunteers, but he is sustained by his faith which motivates him to help his fellow men, women and children who simply need “a hand up” in order to better cope with their daily lives. Martinez quotes the Chinese proverb, "Give a person a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach her how to fish and she will eat for a lifetime."
Strengthening the EITC
As she has for several years, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro participated in the Coalition for Working Families’ tax season kickoff press conference in January 2007, along with State Senator Martin Looney and State Senator Toni Harp, who are taking the lead on the push for a state EITC of 20 percent in addition to the Federal EITC program.
Martinez credits personal relationships with his success in having politicians at press events. Congresswoman DeLauro is a friend of his family as are Senators Looney and Harp. The press conference resulted in media coverage in the New Haven Register and the Spanish-language newspapers Registro. DeLauro and Harp have been participating at tax season media launches since 2004.
Financial education
One of the asset building programs that New Life offers is financial education classes. Using the mailing list compiled from their taxpayer clients, they recruit people to participate in classes which are based on the FDIC’s Money Smart curriculum. Martinez tells the story of one student who came in with 10 credit cards, and who, by the end of the class course, cut them up in front of everyone in the class.
Looking ahead
Grounded in four years of grass roots community service and development, New Life is ready for the next phase of their capacity development. At a planned June retreat they will focus on ways to further synergize their programs to better assist the communities they serve through immigration services, youth development, job development, VITA tax preparation and family health coverage. This is what Martinez describes as, “Bringing the pieces together.”
Story by Don Wedd
