NCTC Information Session Audio Transcript

REBECCA: I do apologize once again to everyone.  We are going to start once again so I do invite now, Joanna, to start off today's info session. 

JOANNA:  Great!  So, again thanks everyone for joining and for calling back in.  We're very excited that you want to learn more about the National Community Tax Coalition.  My name is Joanna Smith-Ramani and I’m the co-chair of the Steering Committee.  I'm also currently the Director of the Baltimore Cash Campaign and we are in Baltimore city in Baltimore County.  Our local asset building and tax preparation coalition has been a member of NCTC for many years.  NCTC serves as what those of us in the field view as our trade association.  There are national groups that really work to connect all of the practitioners to each other so that we can learn from each other and get best practices from each other and help each other but also really to make sure that the stories from our communities about working families and about the work that we're doing and the struggles that our families are seeing really is elevated to the national level so we can do something even bigger about it than just what is happening locally and that's why it's so important that we have members from all over the country.  Currently, we are a national coalition with over 1700 members across the nation so we're huge.  We're huge and we're growing but again the important piece is that we have local members who are bringing their local stories and their local technical assistance needs and their local energy to the national movement.  As you see on the slide, we're also an information and skill building resource.  Our Web site has recently been re-launched so I encourage you to check it out.  There's all kind of information about practices and resources that I know in Baltimore we use quite a bit.  And then the third piece which is really a  growing and incredibly important piece of what we do is taking these stories from the communities and field and really trying to have one unified voice on tax policies and practices and other financial security issues that impact working families and working people in the country and really trying to unite us all around the country and say, hey, these folks are working hard,  these folks  are trying a lot and we have to get our national priorities and policies  straight to support them.  I am the co-chair of the Steering Committee and the Steering Committee is a smaller body that represents the 1700 members and really is kind of the leadership team for the coalition.  We try to make sure that we get feedback, input and a representation from what's going on in the field and all the other members that are part of a coalition and bring that to the staff of NCTC and say 'here's what we need to do to set our goals and priorities, here's what the field needs, wants, and knows and clients' needs and wants and it's very exciting now.  The Steering Committee is elected by members and so in your community you have an opportunity coming very soon. Cari will be e-mailing all of us to nominate leaders in your community that are part of our work and that are part of the coalition to serve on the Steering Committee and to represent you and we're a real diverse set of folks. I represent a large city coalition.  We have folks that represent very rural areas - people from all over the country. We have small programs, big programs, people who are very well funded, people who are struggling to figure it out like most of us.  But the important thing that ties us all together is that we see NCTC as a really critical connector between us in the field to the national level so that our work is relevant and kind of ripples farther than our local community. So Cari, I’m going to turn it back to you now.

CARI: All right, thank you so much, Joanna, I know that you have to jump off the call because you are really busy but thank you so much and if you all have any questions about the Steering Committee feel free to contact me or if you have questions for Joanna, I can get you in touch with her as well.

JOANNA:  Please feel free to contact me.  Thanks so much.

CARI:  - No problem.  All right, I'm going to keep going here and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the benefits and the types of things that you can get as a member of the coalition but first I want to talk to you about how diverse our membership is.  We represent organizations who do free tax preparation, asset building, organizations that are private foundations or financial institutions, a lot of government agencies and things like that. 

Overall, we're mainly consisted of community based nonprofit organizations.  Over 75% of our memberships are community non-profits and things like that and we're going into our benefits.  As a member of the coalition, you get all kinds of benefits.  As an associate member, you get access to our new resource library which is actually called "Program Tools" on the new Web site which gives you access to all of our publications and also from the field so a lot of our affiliates are doing research, they are doing the groundwork and you can use our resource library to get that information.  We also have a lot of publications which I'll get into a little bit later and you get free technical support, access to scholarships, premier resources and as Joanna mentioned, we're having a voting session coming up for our new Steering Committee members where we'll be electing 3-4 new members for our 2010 year.  So on to our communications - we have 4 listservs that anyone who is a member of the coalition can join:

• Tax Round Table Listserv - which can give you the latest community tax news and the latest IRS news, and things that are coming out of that community and also the latest policy issues that are affecting tax preparation.
• Site Manager Listserv - is for site managers and it contains all the relevant TaxWise info and other tax-related issues that contain the practices and principles that you need to run a good free tax preparation site.
• Immigrant Tax Payer Listserv -which deals with all of the issues and acts as a sounding board for all of our members that deal with immigrant populations.
• Hope Listserv - for our members who work with people who are re-entering society after being incarcerated in helping them to get opportunities that they need to succeed and to become productive citizens in our society.

We also do 2 newsletters and Lucy will talk to you more about the Advocacy Newsletter but Tax Buzz comes out monthly and it's full of resources and has all of the community tax news.  You can also read about affiliates that we profile. All of our new resources are in there, upcoming trainings, calendars, as well as job announcements and it's really easy to get on that mailing list.  Just go to our new Web site and at the very top row of navigation, it will say "Get Our Newsletter" and then you can just sign up.  It's a really great resource and it's full of a lot of good stuff.

Another way to get involved with the coalition is through our working groups.  We have  4 currently and one sub-committee which is part of the Scale and Sustainability working group.  We have the Advocacy working group and Lucy will touch on that a little more.  With Asset Building, you can be on the front line of the latest asset building products and you can provide the feedback to the people who are providing these products so we have just launched a pre-paid debit card matrix which is a really great tool where you can compare the pre-paid debit cards that are on the market right now and see which one best fits your site and your program and you can find that in our Program section on the Web site.  The Quality working group - quality seems to be an increasing issue and the latest reports have been really good.  The IRS is reporting 100% quality right now.  Now we haven't done that many shops yet but it's been really great so far this season, our quality is up and that working group is actually working tomorrow so if you want to join the call you can e-mail me but they talk about the latest quality issues and the strategy that the field needs to increase their quality  And then the Scale and Sustainability is really a big topic and it has sustained the free tax preparation field and keeps it at a manageable scale as well.  So there are a lot of ways to get involved.   So one of the ways is to become a NCTC affiliate. The dues are really low cost and they get you a lot of great benefits especially the free technical assistance which Rebecca will talk to you a little about and you can be networking with your peers, really being a voice for the field so if you want to be on a working group, you can really be a leader and help shape the direction of the field.  We have lots of training and conferences - 48 different trainings coming up this year and then all of our advocacy campaigns which Lucy does a great job of.  I really encourage you to check out our new Web site that was just launched this week.  So it's real exciting and it's really a great opportunity for you to provide us some feedback on what you want from the Web site so we hope you can take some time to explore that as well.  So if you're interested in becoming an affiliate or you want to learn a little bit more because I know this has been very brief, our contact details will be at the end of this session and I'm always available so feel free to give me a call or shoot me an e-mail if you want to learn more about joining the coalition as an affiliate.  Now I will turn it over to Rebecca to talk to you a little more about the technical assistance and training.

REBECCA: Cari mentioned that one of the benefits of being an affiliate of NCTC is having technical assistance and the technical assistance that NCTC provides to your organization helps your program develop and become sustainable in the free tax preparation field, asset building or even advocacy.  We do have two types of support is technical assistance support.  Our first type of support is consultative technical assistance and this is the general technical support that we do provide.  So that request comes from you through e-mail or through our listserv and we get in contact with you through that communication which is kind of a secondary two-way communications stream.   The second type of support that we do have is intensive which is more of a customized technical support we provide to your organization for a longer period of time and technical support is a broad range of categories. We  provide assistance in financial service, advocacy and program development, helping you with outreach, building clients and partnerships, troubleshoot any type of problems you may be problems with TaxWise and just any kind of general questions as well  support and to help you in any way that we can to help your program grow and to become sustainable.  Our vehicle for technical assistance is that we do have Program Tools which is on our Web site and Program Tools is our different areas for technical assistance and has different documents and best practices  highlighted in different areas on there that you can see what other organizations are doing on how to implement different human services at your organizations on so if you do go to our NCTC Web site under Program Tools, you will be able to see all of the different resources that are available to help your program.  As Cari mentioned, we do have different listservs that you can join and can get support there.  As I mentioned via phone or e-mail, those are our basic consultative technical assistance.  We can do in-person visits, we can do train-the-trainer or different small conference events which are more of our intensive customized technical assistance that we can provide to affiliates of NCTC.  I want to go over our trainings.  As Cari mentioned, we do have a training schedule developed for 2010 calendar year which will be roughly about 48 trainings.  Our trainings range in different areas, trainings in fundraising, financial services, data collection, outreach, marketing, volunteer recruitment, volunteer training, advocacy, Policy 101 and program and organizational development.  As you see, we touch on a variety of different sectors that everyone in all of the programs can attend to see what people are doing in the field to provide information to everyone to help grow.  I do just want to point out that we do have upcoming training.  We do have a training next week around our organizational program development training series.  We do have an U.S. Census 2010 training. This is a training that NCTC and the Frontera Asset Building Network has joined together to do a training in how to market to groups that are hard to reach in border communities and that is taking place next Monday (Wednesday?).  Then we will be having a financial aid higher education funding training as well but please do visit our Web site under Skill Building under Trainings to view our upcoming and recent trainings that we will be having.  You can also request if you go under our recent trainings and if you do see a training that you wish that you did attend, you can request a copy of the recording by e-mailing me as well.  My contact information also will be at the end of the presentation as well.  And so at this time, I will pass it over to Lucy.  I just want to keep everyone in mind that if you have questions you can ask them through the Chat feature.

LUCY: Thanks, Becky.  So as Becky mentioned earlier on, I am the Field Organizer with NCTC working in our Advocacy Department and I'm just first going to go through  some of our 2010 policy priorities and then talk about ways that you can be engaged as an advocate and some of the resources that we provide to develop your advocacy skills.  So in 2010, a couple of our major policy priorities include increasing funding for the community VITA Grant Program.  Last year we advocated to increase the  VITA? Grant Program from 8 million to 12 million and for fiscal year 2010 and in the present budget for fiscal year 2011, the funding had been brought back down to its original size of 8 million dollars so we'll be advocating strongly for a significant increase this year.  We feel that since the VITA grant was created two years ago that the field has definitely proven itself that VITA is a necessary service for our communities and it provides a necessary service for our community and it's really time that the program was funded to the extent that it needs to be.  So that will be a major push and we'll be calling on VITA programs around the country to participate in that campaign that will kick off in March and probably lasting for about six months really depending on the appropriations timeline.  Another priority for us is tax reform or tax fairness this year, really advocating for not only extensions, making permanent some of the EITC expansions and the child tax credit expansions that were included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  that bring about major reform over the next few years and creating a more progressive tax code.  We'll also advocate for consumer protections.  This year we did a lot of administrative advocacy around the regulation of paid tax preparers and the IRS came out with recommendations to regulate them in the following year and NCTC is looking to continuing to be active on this issue as well which will include looking at the impact of refund anticipation loans and what the Department of Treasury can do to regulate that.  We are also advocating for creation of the consumer financial protection agency.  So there is more information about our policy agenda and our policy resources on our Web site so feel free to visit this site as there are a bunch of policy resources on this Web site and you can definitely contact me for more information. Depending on the campaign, we are always providing our affiliates with various talking points or policy papers that allow them to better communicate about these issues.  If you are interested in participating more in our advocacy campaign, there are a number of ways that you can get involved.  So there are two different leadership levels that you can participate through.  First, you can join as an advocate.  Here we'll be working with you to help you build relationships with your legislators, responding directly to our calls of action and our action alerts to come out and also you'll be invited to participate in an advocacy working group and really help us shape our policy agenda and our advocacy campaigns.  You can also join as a state leader or if you've been with us as an advocate for some time you might step up and become a state leader.  We're really looking for 2-3 people in each state to take on a leadership role in that they will be not only responding to our action alerts but they will be also mobilizing NCTC affiliates in their own state or fellow members in their own state-wide EITC or VITA coalitions, really taking a lead on communicating NCTC policy priorities to the field and connecting with advocates in their own state.  So you can join via our Web site or through contacting me directly.  If you don't feel that you're ready for a leadership role, we do encourage that you sign up for our action alerts and our monthly advocacy newsletter. We also provide a lot of different ways to help you build your leadership skills and become a stronger advocate and you can join an advocacy working group and we also provide advocacy training.  In March, we'll be providing two trainings - one on the advocacy rules for non-profits - a lot of people are confused about what they can and cannot do when it comes to advocacy and lobbying and we'll be providing the training that really breaks that down for you and also provides with you with information about how to report that.  We'll also be providing training that focuses around the VITA grant program.  It's one of our Policy 101 training and it's going to break down the appropriations process, the talking points for VITA and steps that you can take moving forward.  As Cari mentioned earlier, we do provide electronic communications, our action alerts going out to the field and our monthly advocacy newsletter which provides updates on policy as it's moving forward at the federal level.  We also provide access to your fellow advocates in your state and really do encourage those relationships as it not only helps us mobilize people in federal campaigns but those relationships are important as you're working on state level policy work.  And then another thing that is more into intense technical assistance that we provide is one-on-one preparation for any meetings that you have with congressional members and/or their staff.  One thing that we'll be doing this year as we work on tax reform and VITA funding is that we will hopefully be, as NCTC staff, meeting with members and will hopefully be able to conference in some VITA programs so if you're in Ohio and we're meeting with Senator Brown from Ohio, we'll be able to conference in you or one of our colleagues from your VITA program to talk more specifically about what is happening on the ground.  So that's advocacy. I'll turn it back over to Becky.

BECKY:  Thanks, Lucy. I know that we went through our information quickly and it was a lot of information to let you guys know about NCTC, so we'll open it up to questions now and once again please press *7 to unmute your phone and ask your question.  Since there are no questions, we'll move on.  This is our contact information.  If you have questions for Lucy, myself or Cari or anything that we did discuss on today's session, we do hope that you did gain some valuable information about what NCTC and what we can do for you and for your program and for the communities that you serve as well.  We do appreciate as well your support to the coalition and everything that you do in providing your services to your community and to your clients in providing the greater impact that you have for our nation.  Everyone have a great day and we do thank you for joining in and I hope to be speaking with all of you soon.  Thank you.