My Volunteer Stint Begins

If you're a faithful reader of this blog, you may recall that I've signed on to do some volunteer work, completing tax returns for working families, seniors, etc. for the Campaign for Working Families. By the way, if you're in the Philadelphia area, you can still help out. This is from an e-mail I received:

Be a Greeter: We need volunteers to help with the greeting and intake process at our largest sites (Northeast, North Philadelphia, Germantown & Center City). The intake process is an essential part of our tax services and includes greeting customers, making copies, maintaining sign in sheets and other administrative tasks. Please email epwebb@gpuac.org to get placed as a greeter at a site near you!

I'm scheduled to work on Mondays for 6 hours at the Northeast Phila. site, but I may be showing up other days as well, especially in the first 3 weeks when demand is highest. This past Monday was my first day. At my site there were 8 volunteers, including myself, and things went fairly well. However, I got an e-mail from the site manager today. Yesterday only 2 volunteers showed up, and they had to close the doors early; some customers left without getting their tax returns done because of the long wait time. People committed to work on Tuesday but did not show up. That is disappointing. I know it's volunteer work and not a paying job but it's still a commitment.

Basically the process is this: the customer is greeted and fills out some intake paperwork with their general information. If their return isn't too complex, then I can do the return since I'm certified at the Basic level. If not someone who's certified at a higher level has to handle it.

The first return I processed I was feeling very uncertain and had to ask for help once or twice, and made a couple of small mistakes which were caught in the quality review. (Quality reviews are done on each return before the return is set up for electronic filing with the IRS, and the paperwork is printed out, both for the customer's records and for the office.) After that, it was smoother sailing. I completed 4 or 5 returns in full. One person's return wasn't quite finished because she wanted direct deposit of her refund but didn't have her account number and bank's routing number or a voided check with that info, so her return was put on hold until she returned with it.

I could have completed one or two more except the people doing the quality reviews were busy so at times we had to wait our turn. All of the customers I dealt with were very patient. I got more comfortable as the afternoon went on, and I think I made a good decision to do this. It feels like I'm contributing to making people's lives easier. And the fact that they don't have to go to a company like H&R Block means they are keeping all of their money instead of paying fees -- and if they don't have a bank account we have people who can help them open bank accounts, or they can receive their refund in the form of a prepaid debit card with just a $1.00 monthly fee, again saving on the fees charged by H&R Block for advances on their refund.