ARKANSAS ASSET BUILDERS

When we can offer free tax preparation through VITA, households can make use of the entire value of their refund to pay off debt, make large purchases, or save it for the future. Arkansas Asset Builders believes that access to these valuable tax refunds is a key step to empowering hard-working Arkansans to achieve their financial goals.

In the coming year, we plan to add a mobile tax site to our program offerings. With this mobile technology, we will be able to set up an ad hoc tax preparation site in partner locations throughout Faulkner County without having to rely on their ability to provide computers, printers, or even internet access. We hope that by providing free tax prep in trusted locations and flexible hours throughout the area, we will be able to overcome many of the barriers faced by taxpayers who currently do not choose free tax preparation.

Once we have the technology to completely support our own service, we will actively develop partnerships with other organizations -- libraries, schools, churches, nonprofits, etc. -- which have relationships with underserved populations in central Arkansas. We will work together to identify specific date(s) and times where we can bring free tax preparation to their clients/members. The partner organizations will help recruit and schedule taxpayer appointments, while Arkansas Asset Builders will provide the trained volunteers and mobile technology necessary to complete online tax filing.

This is the second tax season that Arkansas Asset Builders has been providing free volunteer income tax assistance (VITA) to the central Arkansas community. Our main VITA site in Conway provides access to free in-person tax preparation on Friday evenings and Saturdays as an alternative for taxpayers seeking to avoid costly tax preparation fees. The majority of clients already served this year report that if they did not use VITA, they would have gone to a paid preparer.

In the coming year, we plan to add a mobile tax site to our program offerings. With this mobile technology, we will be able to set up an ad hoc tax preparation site in partner locations throughout Faulkner County without having to rely on their ability to provide computers, printers, or even internet access. We hope that by providing free tax prep in trusted locations and flexible hours throughout the area, we will be able to overcome many of the barriers faced by taxpayers who currently do not choose free tax preparation.

Once we have the technology to completely support our own service, we will actively develop partnerships with other organizations -- libraries, schools, churches, nonprofits, etc. -- which have relationships with underserved populations in central Arkansas. We will work together to identify specific date(s) and times where we can bring free tax preparation to their clients/members. The partner organizations will help recruit and schedule taxpayer appointments, while Arkansas Asset Builders will provide the trained volunteers and mobile technology necessary to complete online tax filing.

Arkansas Asset Builders has built close partnerships with faculty and staff at UCA, Hendrix, and CBC, which have been critical in recruiting the students that are the heart of our volunteer effort. We are effectively using partnerships with other local nonprofits to conduct outreach to the population we hope to serve at the tax site(s). In our first season, the largest source of referrals to our tax site was from the Faulkner County Library. We are continuing to work with the regional library network to expand free tax prep resources for its patrons, both at the Faulkner County branch and satellite branches across the area.

Our VITA Program Manager (and Executive Director), Joyia Yorgey, has extensive volunteer and professional experience with VITA programs in other communities. She has served as a volunteer preparer and quality reviewer in Washington, DC, and in Philadelphia, PA. She also worked for two tax seasons as a manager of a large tax site in downtown Philadelphia, training/overseeing 100+ volunteers and producing over 2,000 tax returns per season.

This is the second tax season that Arkansas Asset Builders is operating a VITA site in Faulkner County. We had a very successful season last year, completing 180 tax returns, logging over 430 volunteer hours, and returning nearly $214,000 in federal and state tax refunds to hard-working families in our community. We are building on this success in our second season and already have a strong volunteer base and community partnerships that can support an expanded mobile site presence.

Arkansas Asset Builders hopes to expand our VITA program into neighboring communities, such as Vilonia, Mayflower, Greenbrier, Morrilton, or Perryville, within the next 3-5 years. We are already serving clients from these communities at our location in Conway and know that there is a need for local free tax prep in these communities. A mobile site allows us to begin collaborating with partners in these communities without committing resources to a stand-alone site. The most fruitful partnerships could then be developed into ongoing tax prep sites in future years. Arkansas Asset Builders would continue to support volunteer recruitment, outreach, and site administration across our service area, but will also rely on the local relationships of our volunteers and partners to develop a sustainable presence in every community.