Best Practices
WHOLE VILLAGE FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER (VITA)
258 HIGHLAND STREET
PLYMOUTH, NH 03264
1. History
2. Time-Line
3. Budget
4. 2006 VITA Results
5. Hours of Operation
6. # Volunteers
7. # Volunteer Hours
8. Source of Volunteers
9. # Clients Served
10. $ Value of refunds
11. Additional $’s saved clients in tax return refund preparation
12. Site Coordination
13. Volunteers
14. Media/Marketing
15. Outreach
16. Coalition Building
17. Future
1. History (how long has you site been in operation?)
4 months
2. Time-Line (were there goals you attempted to accomplish each year?)
Yes
3. Budget (what is your budget for your site and source of dollars?)
$2000
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4. 2006 VITA Results (this will be provided by IRS)
5. Hours of Operation
Tuesdays: Walk-Ins all day and evening. Appointments
needed on other days.
6. # Volunteers
14
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7. # Volunteer Hours
375 hours
8. Source of Volunteers
Plymouth State University
Lakes Region Community Service Council
9. # Clients Served
50
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10. $ Value of refunds (will get from IRS)
11. Additional dollars saved clients in tax return refund preparation (if you collected this information)
Best Practices (this section looks at what worked best for your site)
- Having flexible hours - esp. night-time hours.
- The Location of Family Resource Center led to success. Clients were referred from several social service agencies within our building. In turn we made referrals to those same agencies.
- It was great having an AARP site in the same town-when we had returns we weren’t qualified to do, we could send them to the other location.
- Having students double checking each other worked out well.
- Professor is a CPA and attorney-he created a more detailed form which helped the volunteers work more efficiently.
12. Site Coordination (what made your site run smoothly and efficiently?
how were you successful in reaching targeted clientele?)
- Co-location was a plus. Each agency had posters and flyers promoting our site
- Small community lends itself to word of mouth.
- 35 posters were distributed locally by one of the agencies in the building.
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13. Volunteers (how did you recruit volunteers? what did you do to keep
them working at your site?)
PSU has a one credit class which met at the Vita Site.
Students were required to volunteer-a win -win situation.
14. Media/Marketing (what did you do in the area of media and
marketing that increased awareness about your site?)
- A local free paper listed the site under “community services” and many clients noted they heard about us from that.
- Placing a notice on PSU’s website reached 4000 people including students and support staff.
- Press releases were sent to a local paper which placed it in a special section on tax preparation.
- Notices were sent out to a list I have created of social service agencies as well as school nurses.
15. Outreach (what other types of outreach activities were you
involved in to enhance the effectiveness of your site?)
- I went to a soup kitchen to make appointments.
- On a few occasions, I used stuffers at the local food pantries-clients mentioned that was how they heard about us.
- We were open on the same day as the food pantry located downstairs from us.
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16. Coalition Building (if you have a coalition, what made it successful?)
17. Future (what are your plans for the future [site expansion,
asset building, etc.]? what will you do differently in the future?)
Try to be open more hours and start in mid January-the
semester didn’t start until Feb1st and we lost clients
because of that.
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