We work as CVITP volunteers in a large urban area.  At the height of the tax season, in March and April, there are over 40 host organizations offering CVITP clinics in our area.  Yet they do not coordinate their CVITP efforts between themselves.  We suspect this is true in many urban centres.  Why?

In this article, we give nine examples to illustrate some of the ways in which CVITP host organizations can coordinate by pooling clients, volunteers and information.

We then explore the question of why this doesn’t happen more often.  In a nutshell, many host organizations feel they cannot afford the costs, in the short term, to closer collaboration.  Ideally, the CRA’s regional coordinators could take on the role of leading coordination efforts amongst host organizations within their regions, helping to overcome some of these costs.  However, given the CRA’s generally cautious approach to the CVITP, we do not see this happening anytime soon.

Yet we know that there are cases of closer collaboration between host organizations, even if infrequent.  We offer up the intriguing example of Aspire Calgary to show how 18 host organizations have managed to closely collaborate on a range of activities related to the CVITP, from training to fundraising.  Working together, they have managed to produce impressive results in support of Calgary’s poverty reduction strategy: in 2019, their 572 volunteers filed 8,797 returns in 325 clinics which generated $43 million in government benefits for people on low incomes.  We briefly outline three notable features of Aspire Calgary’s model which support this collaboration.

Such cases demonstrate that some organizations are willing to incur the short-term costs associated with better collaboration.   Why?  We believe it is because they have realized that the short-term costs are outweighed by the benefits over the medium term.  Chief amongst these benefits is better client service: more clients can be assisted; they can be assisted by volunteers who better understand their particular circumstances and the service can be offered on a more flexible basis.

Finally in our article, we set out a challenge in 2023 for host organizations who are willing to take the first step toward closer collaboration with others in their region.  We propose volunteer training, an area we find to be neglected at many host organizations we know and an important element for improving service to clients.