November 4, 2022
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?
Before trying to answer this question, let’s first illustrate some of the ways in which CVITP host organizations could coordinate. We think the COVID-induced introduction of virtual clinics has opened up additional opportunities for coordination. Then, we will explore why so little of this happens. But we will cite one case to show that it can happen. Finally, we will briefly discuss the costs and benefits of this kind of coordination. We hope to convince you that the benefits of coordination outweigh the costs particularly over the longer term. Assuming you’re convinced, we offer up a brief proposal for 2023 – and seek feedback from host organizations which are already doing this.
Opportunities for host organizations to coordinate
Pooling CLIENTS
Here are three examples of ways in which host organizations can coordinate their efforts:
- Where there are a large number of host organizations serving the same catchment area, these organizations may wish to coordinate in offering CVITP services to different client groups (e.g. seniors, newcomers, students). This specialization allows the host organizations and their volunteers to become more knowledgeable about the tax credits and benefits that are relevant to the distinct populations they serve.
- For virtual clinics where host organizations interview clients and record their personal information on intake forms before passing these forms onto their volunteers, host organizations may wish to coordinate in preparing one common intake form. As the personal information required of the client for the preparation of the return is the same regardless of the host organization, the standardized form can then be translated into other languages (starting with the two official languages).
- For in-person clinics where clients meet with a volunteer at a designated time and location, host organizations may wish to coordinate in having one common number that clients can call to book an appointment. Staff or volunteers receiving these calls can identify which host organization is best suited to serve the client. Using a centralized appointment system, the client can also be given an appointment at a CVITP clinic.
Pooling VOLUNTEERS
Here are three examples of ways in which host organizations can coordinate their efforts:
- Training on issues related to preparing and filing returns can be tailored to suit the needs of volunteers. For example, the training needs of new volunteers differ substantially from those of experienced, returning volunteers. Again, separate training sessions can be offered in each official language (as well as other languages commonly used to serve clients). Finally, volunteers can be offered different times, allowing them the option to find the one that best suits their schedule.
- Volunteers can be shared between host organizations, to fit volunteer supply with client demand. This ensures that volunteers are not sitting idle in some host organizations with low demand while clients are not being turned away in other host organizations which are experiencing high demand. Virtual clinics open up the possibility of sharing volunteers virtually, as the host organization’s intake forms could be shared with any available volunteers participating in a coalition of host organizations. The availability of common intake forms, as described above, further facilitates shared volunteers’ work of preparing returns.
- Experienced volunteers can be identified by host organizations to be shared as mentors with other host organizations. At the same time, volunteers specialized in handling with unusual issues can be called upon by less knowledgeable volunteers to provide them with advice about complicated cases.
Pooling INFORMATION
Here are three examples of ways in which host organizations can coordinate their efforts:
- Collection and analysis of aggregated demographic and economic data on clients served by CVITP clinics can identify gaps in service within the community. For example, such analysis could reveal that host organizations in the area need to make greater efforts to offer access to the homeless to their CVITP clinics.
- Collection and analysis of aggregated benefit data on clients served by CVITP clinics can demonstrate to stakeholders just how much these clinics help low-income people in the community to access federal and provincial benefits to which they are entitled and thereby improve their income security. This information can be especially important to share with donors when host organizations are raising funds to support future CVITP clinics.
- When host organizations in the community are lobbying government, whether at the municipal, provincial/territorial or federal levels, officials are more likely to pay attention when these host organizations have a common message they wish to convey.
Why does so little of this happen?
When it comes to multiservice host organizations, for which the CVITP clinics represent just one of their services to clients, our experience is that senior management often pays little attention to their CVITP clinics. This lack of attention takes many forms. Staff with other work responsibilities will be assigned to handle their CVITP clinics. These staff will have little time to dedicate to support and oversee their clinics in the months of March and April and generally no time to do so outside these months. There’s often a high turnover of such staff. In the absence of staff continuity, documenting results becomes especially important. Given their other responsibilities, clinic coordinators may not have the time to document their successes, failures and potential remedies. But even where they manage to do this, these results may have little influence with senior management. This means the host organization may fail to learn lessons over time from the way they manage their CVITP clinics.
So why the limited attention span? We see at least two reasons: a lack of understanding and money. Senior management may be unaware of the impact of CVITP services on the income security of their clients. This means a tendency to adopt a short-term approach to clinics, focusing on the costs. There are real costs to managing coordination. These may appear to outweigh the benefits, especially if the number of clients being provided with the CVITP service is small; and these clients only need the service once a year, by comparison with other services which take up a lot more staff time. An absence of financial empowerment within the host organization’s core mandate means no substantial financial and staff resources will be allocated to supporting their CVITP clinics. And what gets money gets the attention of senior management. Yet as the amounts on offer from the CRA’s pilot grant program climb, funds received by the host organization could be used to offset some of the costs it incurs in managing coordination.
As for single service host organizations, they are often short on the staff who can spend time meeting and negotiating with other host organizations in their area. These organizations are generally smaller so they are less likely to hold sway in discussions with the larger multiservice host organizations and thus stand the greatest to lose in terms of autonomy. But they also stand the greatest to gain in that they can benefit from the expertise and resources larger host organizations bring to the table.
Host organizations whose core mandate is the financial empowerment of clients could lead on efforts to better coordinate. But they are less likely to do so as they stand the least to gain from it. They already understand the important role that the CVITP service plays in advancing the income security of their clients; this is why the service is usually an integral part of their operations, sometimes even the entry point for new clients to the other services they offer. And these host organizations have the budgets to provide a better CVITP service to their clients. Finally, they usually have ample volunteers to support their CVITP service.
Ideally, the CRA regional coordinator could take on the role of leading coordination efforts amongst host organizations within their region. After all, this is normally where the public sector is active, in providing a public good that no private actor is willing to provide. However, given the CRA’s generally cautious approach to the CVITP, we do not see this happening anytime soon.
Yet we know it does happen
Aspire Calgary offers an intriguing example of coordination in a large urban setting. This is “a multi-sector collaborative of over 30 organizations working to implement financial empowerment in the city of Calgary as part of the city’s poverty reduction strategy.” At the time of writing this article, Aspire Calgary’s website indicated that in 2019, 18 of their partner agencies had filed 8,797 returns which generated $43 million in government benefits for people on low incomes in Calgary. This was done with the assistance of 572 volunteers who filed returns in 325 tax clinics.
Aspire Calgary’s model has three notable features in its structure. First, Aspire Calgary has a steering committee which provides overall strategic guidance to the collaboration and four working groups which correspond to its four programming areas, of which taxation and benefits is one.
“A core strategy of each Working Group is community capacity building. Each body of work has an in-person training that is designed for front-line staff, and this training includes all resources that a front-line staff would need to run a financial empowerment program. After receiving training, staff have access to a Community of Practice which meets on a regular basis to support practitioners in sharing best practices and resources, continuing to build their knowledge and skills, and advancing their professional practice.”
Rise Calgary is a partner within the taxation & benefits working group and leads its community of practice.
Second, the Aspire Calgary collaborative is supported by what it calls a “backbone” organization, Momentum.
“[Momentum] provides supporting infrastructure to coordinate the work among Aspire’s partners and push forward the overall initiative. Key Backbone activities include: providing overall project strategic coherence, serving as a neutral convener and facilitator, managing data collection and analysis, supporting community engagement, developing effective communication, and fundraising to help support the work of Aspire.”
Third, the funders of this collaborative effort include the city of Calgary, the United Way of Calgary and Area, the Albertan government’s Family and Community Support Services program, the government of Canada and ATB Financial. Clearly, such a collaboration costs money but there are also donors who see the benefits in coordinating partners’ efforts.
So why should host organizations coordinate?
There are some obvious costs to coordination. In the short term, it requires additional time from staff in host organizations to meet together and hash out what is to be done and how. In coming to agreement on ways to work together, some host organizations may also experience some loss of autonomy over the procedures they want their own staff and volunteers to follow. And some of the initiatives that get agreed to, such as establishing a centralized appointment system, may require additional money to set up.
However, we believe these short-term costs are outweighed in the medium term by the benefits. First and foremost of these 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.
Additionally, it can mean better support for volunteers with their work. It can also reduce the amount of time staff need to invest in managing clients and volunteers. And it can lead to greater financial support for host organizations’ CVITP clinics.
A challenge for the 2023 return filing season
New collaborations between host organizations usually start small and build over time, both in the number of members and in the aspects they manage to coordinate.
For host organizations in urban areas who want to explore some form of collaboration, we believe volunteer training could be considered as a good first step. This is an area we find to be neglected at many host organizations we know and an important element in improving service to clients. The larger host organizations with financial empowerment mandates seem to know this as they tend to invest heavily in volunteer training.
While mainly for new volunteers, training could also include refreshers for returning volunteers, especially for those who only started filing for the first time in 2022 as well short sessions for experienced volunteers that focus on what is new in 2023. It can be coordinated easily, delivered on a large scale, whether in the classroom or online, and can bring together experts who can share their experiences with a wide audience. This would be especially beneficial for the multiservice as well as the small, single service host organizations who do not have the time nor the expertise to provide in-depth, specialized training to their CVITP volunteers.
We would love to hear from host organizations which already have experience doing this as well as those who try it for the first time in 2023. What challenges did you face in collaborating across host organizations on training? How have you met these challenges? Is it your experience that the benefits outweigh the costs?