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Start a Tax Program

Learn How to Become a Free Tax Site

Do you serve working families? Would you like to expand your services to provide free tax preparation to your community? Do you want a new way to draw in new clients for your current services?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, becoming part of the Earn It! Keep It! Save It! Coalition may be beneficial to your organization.

Your organization could be a great tax site if you:

  • Are a well respected agency, church, organization, or business in your community
  • Have mission alignment with EKS’ mission to serve working families and help them become financially stable
  • Have staff capacity to provide a site coordinator before, during and after tax season
  • Already assist the target population of low Income taxpayers and/or taxpayers with Limited English Proficiency (LEP)
  • Have appropriate infrastructure: IT capacity, office or room space, internet, etc.

Please review our Opening a VITA Site: A How-To Toolkit for an overview of the timeline and requirements. You can also download our New Site Orientation presentation.



Learn How to Start an EITC Coalition/Campaign

As every successful community building program knows, each community is very different from the next. While Earn It! Keep It! Save It! Bay Area is led regionally by United Way of the Bay Area, each of our seven counties have a coalition that governs the EITC Campaign in that county. Our coalitions are made up of local nonprofits, financial institutions, government agencies, churches and others. These partnerships are built by assessing mission alignment, an effort to engage the entire community and each coalition member bringing various resources and tools to the table.

Some of the partners responsible for leading the EKS effort are the IRS, lead agencies in various counties, EKS Steering Committees and the United Way. As the regional lead, our roles include:

  • Fund development & site funding
  • Regional marketing & Public Relations
  • Coordinate trainings (volunteer & site coordinator)
  • Convene monthly site coordinator meetings
  • Lead strategic planning for each tax season
  • Data collection / survey administration
  • Access to 2-1-1 call centers
  • Regional coalition representative in the community and nationally
  • Share best practices regionally
  • Provide technical assistance to all tax sites


For more information, please contact EKS staff. You are also encouraged to review our materials and resources below.

In July 2009, EKS Staff convened several Northern California tax coalitions in San Francisco to share best practices and learn from each other. Please review the coalition building presentation for information and background specifically about the United Way of the Bay Area's Earn It! Keep It! Save It! coalition.

The National Community Tax Coalition is a nationwide association of organizations providing free tax preparation services and other asset building services to low income working families. Visit the National Community Tax Coalition website for resources and information on how to start a tax coalition.