Working in the Sweet Spot of the Financial Meltdown

In the spring of 2008, the Mahoning County’s Library and United Way started to bring together a group of organizations to form what has since come to be known as the Financial Stability Partnership. The library’s interest in fostering the partnership stemmed its being awarded one of 13 initial grants from the FINRA Foundation through ALA’s SmartInvesting @ yourlibrary initiative. Several of the organizations that formed the partnership had a history of providing free tax counseling services for seniors and low-to- moderate income residents. The local Community Action agency and the Department of Finance and Accounting at the local university trained students to providing VITA counseling. The library had a history of providing space to AARP volunteers for tax counseling. In 2008, these organizations decided to more closely coordinate their efforts, promoting each others activities, engaging the IRS to track results, and recruiting more volunteers. A special emphasis was made to increase awareness of the availability of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The result was impressive. The IRS reported that ‘the impact to the community and those most in need has been tremendous, totaling nearly 2.18 million dollars in refunds and fee savings”. 2,487 tax returns brought in over $1,682,357 net refund dollars into the County, including $639,610 EITC dollars. plus estimated fee savings of $497,400. The success of the program seems even more impressive when one considers that this was a trial year and that its effectiveness was muted due to lack of a sufficient number of trained volunteers. Available slots for tax counseling were booked almost immediately. The challenge of recruiting and training volunteers is already being worked on for 2009.