Join a Working Group or Forum
One way to get involved in the work of NCTC is to join one of our working groups or forums. As a member, you'll have a chance to interact with your peers and influence the development of NCTC products and the positions we take on issues relevant to our field.
Advocacy & Civic Engagement Forum:
- Facilitate grassroots mobilization & advocacy campaigns to further NCTC's public policy agenda.
- Develop educational materials and tools to help organizations improve their participation in local, state and federal advocacy efforts.
- Learn from your colleagues as this forum will feature how organizations around the country get involved and take action on the issues they care about.
Asset Building Forum:
- Enrich the asset building initiatives of free tax programs working with low- and moderate-income clients by gathering and sharing information regarding lessons learned.
- Seek opportunities to influence the design of asset building products and programs.
- Facilitate and promote research regarding low- and moderate-income workers' preferences for asset building products and programs (using surveys, evaluation, pilot programs, etc.).
- Identify and share the latest updates on topics such as refund splitting, the sale of savings bonds at tax sites, and technology that facilitates and streamlines access to bank accounts and other financial products.
Community Tax Preparation Forum
- Facilitate discussion of basic and intermediate topics of operating a tax site and community tax preparation program as a whole.
- Provide new and emerging programs the opportunity to share and learn ideas, resources, techniques and other valuable information from more established programs or from each other.
- A subcommittee of this forum focuses on Scale & Sustainability, specifically how to sustain and grow the community tax preparation and asset building field.
Data Collection Working Group
- Provide guidance and support for the field in collecting data from tax preparation software.
- Ready access to client data is critical to the fields’ ability to understand clients’ habits, needs and interests.
- Provides field input to software developers and develops tools for the field to use to access data.
Public Policy & Research Working Group:
- Craft recommendations and proposals for policymakers that improve the financial security of low- and moderate-income taxpayers.
- Share new research and best-practices to shape and drive the policy and advocacy solutions for issues facing the VITA field.
- Raise the visibility of NCTC in federal tax issues discussions and policy updates.
- Lend your voice to the development of NCTC’s annual policy agenda.
Quality Assurance Working Group:
- Increase accuracy of tax returns prepared at free tax preparation sites.
- Investigate ways to analyze tax return quality nationwide.
- Improve effectiveness of training for preparers and staff.
- Emphasize site operations that improve quality.
- Expand and enhance resources related to quality.
Interested in joining a working group? Sign up now!
