Tax Flyering 101

After cutting my teeth co-planning Toledo's Ohio Benefit Bank fall regional meeting in November, I felt a lot more confident coming into tax season being asked to help plan and host several tax clinics.

Not that I didn't have more to learn.

Perhaps my biggest accomplishment this month has been learning to plan and host a tax clinic from the ground up, including picking a date, mapping a strategy, making a site visit, organizing volunteers, creating and posting flyers, sending out media releases, scheduling client appointments, setting up the site, handling client intake and working the clinic.

Flyering is an art-form in itself. Fellow VISTA Maureen and I have gotten a lot smarter since we started.

One of my favorite things to do is scope out all the H&R Blocks, Jackson Hewitts and Liberty Mutuals around town and hit all the businesses around them hard.

It's not too difficult to spot Liberty Mutuals thanks to their spiffy dancing Statues of Liberty. (I hope that gig pays well...it's gotta be embarrassing)

(Randomly Googled photo)

Often the businesses will already have stacks of flyers from one of the tax prep services, perhaps offering $30 off. But wait, here's mine, BAM! FREE! haha

Places with community bulletin boards, like certain librarys and laudromats and all Panera Breads, are the best thing ever.

Starting early is always an excellent idea. Fellow VISTA Maureen - organizer extroidinaire - has helped whip us into better shape on that front. We actually started flyering for our clinic tomorrow in early February. It was a good feeling to know we were early enough that it was actually worth stopping at churches, for example, and know there would actually still be a weekend service before the event.

In an attempt to be more efficient, I've also started dropping off other OBB info, especially a general 800-number tax flyer, along with the tax clinic flyer so they know this isn't a one-time service and see they have other options if someone can't make it to the event.

Good places to post flyers that create the most "bang for your buck" ie most potential for the greatest number of people seeing one flyer include libraries, apartment complexes, laudromats and daycares.

Another good trick if a business kind of balks at putting out your flyer to the public is to ask if they could put it in the back for their employees. Most will agree to at least that. And employees need to file taxes too, yo. Good deal.