Family Resource Center at Gorham

As part of their Employee Support Program and in addition to their public VITA site, the Family Resource Center at Gorham in New Hampshire takes VITA to the workplace. Deploying their mobile site to a large employer, they can complete tax returns for 40 employees in a single day. In addition, the Family Resource Center launched an initiative to assist taxpayers with disabilities, and led a Roll Your Change Week (RYCW) that brought $20,000 to savings accounts of local families.

Employee Support Program

The Ford Foundation and Families and Work Institute selected the Family Resource Center in 2007 to:

• Increase the number of employers who link their lower wage employees with publicly funded work supports such as Healthy Kids, EITC, Fuel Assistance and Childcare Scholarships
• Increase the number of low wage workers who access publicly funded work supports and improve their financial position.

This was not new to the Family Resource Center, which already was involved both with VITA and had developed partnerships with employers through a Workforce Development program. The new funding enabled them to expand their program and link tax preparation with benefits screening. Visiting their 9 employer partners, they present information on a suite of over 40 benefits, and screen interested employees for eligibility in one-on-one interviews.

To overcome the stigma associated with public benefits, the Employee Support Program team, led by Financial Literacy/VITA Coordinator Judy Woodward, ensures that their suite of benefits include some which have no eligibility guidelines as well as the many which do. While enrollment is not necessary for employees who only want their taxes filed or free credit reports, Woodward indicates that there are currently 277 enrollees in the Employee Support Program.

In her first year of the program, Woodward found that the VITA program was used by a significant number of higher-income employees rather than their lower-income target group, so last year she imposed a $45,000 income cap for families with up to 2 children with allowances for families with more than 2 children.

In December, the Employee Support Program sent out a mailing to employees who had enrolled in the program about the high cost and dangers of Holiday Loans against tax refunds. This letter instructed the employee to watch their mail for more information about the free tax service. Everyone loves a coupon, so in the first week of January, Judy and her team mailed coupons for free tax preparation to the enrolled employees. In the mailing, she included education about Refund Anticipation Loans and the dates that the VITA service would be available. Many employees turned up at their appointments with coupons in hand.

 

Paycheck stuffers, marketing posters and contact with employers are other tactics Judy uses to promote the service before her VITA site arrives at the workplace. “We adopted a more visual campaign this year”, states Woodward, “and we used a large photo of money being flushed down a toilet to grab attention, with the words ‘Do You Do This?’ on the photo”. This method worked very well as an attention grabber and caused people to stop to read the information.”

Once at the workplace, her staff of 4 to 6 volunteer tax preparers can process up to 40 returns in 1 day, allowing each employee 30 to 45 minutes. The Family Resource Center prepared 80 tax returns in their first year, and 365 this year.

Expecting difficulty preparing taxes for international workers on work visas at a resort hotel, Woodward arranged for Southern New Hampshire University to help with international returns. However, many of the workers who thought they were non-resident aliens were in fact resident aliens, a less complicated class. “It was a great learning experience for our volunteers and it was a great opportunity for the students at SNHU to have a hands-on experience”, says Woodward.

Poorest County

Coos County, located in northern New Hampshire, with an ageing population of 33,000, is the poorest county in the state. With a dispersed population and mountainous terrain, Woodward and her team may travel 30-60 minutes to reach people who need tax service. The only other free tax preparation service is 40 minutes away, a significant hardship for low income families due to the cost of travel and the often treacherous winter driving conditions.

Following the decline of the paper-making industry, Wal-Mart and Androscoggin Valley Hospital are two of the remaining major employers. A casualty of the recession, the community’s only large grocery store closed recently. At the same time, the IRS estimates that $800,000 of EITC is not being claimed within the county and, in fact, New Hampshire is number 1 in unclaimed EITC dollars. Woodward finds that county residents are shocked when they hear that such a significant economic stimulus is being left unclaimed.

 

Woodward tells of a couple she has been serving for 3 years. In the first year, the woman was expecting a baby, so Woodward informed her about IDAs while preparing her tax return. By researching the most beneficial dependent arrangement for the unmarried couple, Woodward was able to increase their refund by $700. Recently the woman, now expecting again, came to a property tax relief day, and has joined an IDA program for home repair.

Disability Outreach

Woodward works with several organizations serving clients with developmental disabilities. Through a collaboration with the Center for Economic Development and Disabilities at the Southern NH University, the Family Resource Center has forged partnerships with Northern Human Services in Berlin and the Vershire Center in Colebrook. Many of their clients present income statement forms showing only a few dollars of tax withholding and have not filed tax returns because they expect the refund to be less than the cost of tax preparation. When Woodward prepares their taxes, some have received $400-500 refunds because they are eligible for the EITC. There was inordinate emotion around the refunds. When Woodward finished the tax return for one young man and his mother told him that he could use the refund to purchase a computer, he was beside himself with joy. Another man was excited to have $25 of his own money to buy a shirt.

Roll Your Change

In 2007, Woodward organized an asset building coalition, the Building Financial Futures Coalition, made up of area social service agencies, educators and financial institutions. As a result of a contact she made during a NCTC Conference, Woodward brought the idea of sponsoring a “Roll Your Change Week” each October to her coalition. Her aim is to get the community thinking about savings in a different way – that a “savings plan” can be as simple as collecting loose change on a regular basis and depositing it into a savings account.

The Building Financial Futures Coalition embraced the idea of Roll Your Change Week, with every financial institution in the Berlin-Gorham area participating and assisting in the marketing of the occasion. During the week long event, the coalition encourages people to bring in rolled or loose change, with each financial institution offering an entry form for a drawing of a $100 savings bond. At the end of the week, all participants are entered in a community-wide drawing for a $1,000 savings bond. A 4 year old boy won the $1,000 this year after depositing the contents of his piggy bank. In addition to the savings bond, Woodward prepared a gift bag for the young man which included a piggy bank, a teddy bear and a set of financially focused Sammy the Rabbit story books and music CD, by Sam X Renick.

Local schools and After School Programs are involved in RYCW through “Rock and Roll” events…the “Rock” portion is music via I-Pod with speakers and the “Roll” is the rolling of change. Using coin sorters provided by Woodward, students roll change for the public as a community service. Seizing the teachable moment, Woodward asks students to guess how much will be rolled, and they are usually surprised at the result. One student commented, “If saving all these pennies, nickels, and dimes adds up to a lot of money, then it must add up when you spend pennies, nickels, and dimes”.

Last year, in the small community of Berlin and Gorham, total population of 11,913, it added up to $20,000 deposited during Roll Your Change Week.

Woodward states, “The event has become something that the entire community looks forward to and it is spreading across the state. I receive frequent calls and emails as more and more organizations seek information on hosting their own Roll Your Change Week”.