OBB Tax Trainings in the Central Region

If you are an OBB counselor in the Central Region you should have received an e-mail with next quarter's training schedule. You may have noticed that there are no tax trainings listed. This is not a mistake. This year we will not be providing tax training for new volunteers until mid-December. The reasons for this decision are below:

1) Our partners at Solutions for Progress, developers of The Benefit Bank, must wait for final directions from the IRS in order to program appropriate modules for the software. Many of these directions do not come until December. We want to be able to train your new volunteers on the current tax year's software modules to avoid confusion and the need for additional 'refresher' training.
2) The OBB Tax Training manuals will also not be available until sometime in December for the same reason given in item #1. Your new volunteers should have access to the most up-to-date training materials available when they sit down with their first client at you Kick-Off Events.
3) Many new OBB counselors who were trained on taxes in October or November were concerned that they had forgotten too much important information by the time tax season arrived. Many counselors asked to attend another training in December or January, but I fear that many more decided that this volunteer opportunity was not for them. Hopefully this change to our training schedule will help to produce more confident counselors for your tax clinics and increase volunteer retention.
4) This year the OBB is partnering with the IRS to develop a level two tax training for site administrators and experienced volunteers. This training will be accessible through OASHF, watch your e-mail for more details!
As noted in the e-mail you received each county will have at least one scheduled OBB Tax Training between December 13th and January 15th. In addition, each county will have at least one OBB Tax Training scheduled in February or March. If this schedule will not work for your clinic please contact Zach Reat to set up an additional training, zach@oashf.org or 614-221-4336 ext. 236.