October 9, 2020

Announcement: Tax Time Savings Initiative 2021 cohort (application deadline extended to October 22, 2020):

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) is looking for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs to join the Tax Time Savings Initiative 2021 cohort. If you offer VITA, we hope you are considering applying to join this year’s Tax Time Savings Initiative 2021 cohort.  Cohort members will have unique opportunities to start, expand, and adapt their tax time savings efforts. If you think your program is a good fit, fill out this application and send it to taxtime@cfpb.gov by October 22th, 2020.

Initiative Details:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) is looking for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs to join the Tax Time Savings Initiative 2021 cohort. The goal of the tax time savings initiative is to provide increased opportunities for consumers to save while filing their tax returns. We are seeking approximately 75 VITA programs from across the country that are interested in starting or expanding their savings initiatives within their tax preparation programs for the 2021 tax season.

Programs that are selected to participate will benefit from training and technical support provided by nationally recognized experts on VITA program management and service design.

Our training and technical assistance plans will adjust to the operational and economic realities of tax-time savings in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including: Delivering financial well-being interventions with alternative tax service modelsMaintaining the quality of taxpayer and volunteer experiences in a virtual environment or while social distancingProviding savings engagements appropriate to the economic moment

Programs that meet the following criteria will be considered for selection:

• Knowledge about the benefits of saving. Demonstrate an understanding of the benefits of promoting saving at tax time and interest in how to integrate savings promotion into existing VITA programs.
• Staff capacity. Demonstrate capacity to dedicate staff or volunteer time directly to savings promotion.
• Marketing saving. Have an interest in promoting saving to clientele before and during tax season through marketing and other consumer information channels.
• Target population. We are seeking a diverse set of VITA programs so that the cohort serves a broad range of consumers; special consideration will be given to programs serving traditionally underserved or hard to serve tax filers.
• Information sharing. Commit to sharing aggregated, de-identified data regarding returns and saving activity after the end of the 2020 tax season.

If you think your program is a good fit, fill out the application and send it to taxtime@cfpb.gov by October 22, 2020.

All applications will receive written confirmation of receipt. If you submit an application and do not receive a response within 48 hours, please email taxtime@cfpb.gov.

The Bureau will work with the selected programs to implement promising practices identified from our work with VITA programs across the country over the past six years. Through this project, we hope to help your program implement practices and approaches to encourage saving and to learn more about the effectiveness of these practices in increasing saving during tax time. You can read about the promising practices in our report, Building a brighter future by saving at tax time. Additional savings-related tools and resources are highlighted through the Bureau’s Start Small, Save Up initiative.