Date: September 17, 2026

Topic: Coalition partnerships — MOUs, sub-awards, and developing partner sites

Session Overview

• Monthly call for people leading or building partnerships and coalitions within VITA. The facilitator framed the day around MOUs and sub-awards: what a coalition lead promises to individual partners, and what is expected back from them.
• Four participants spoke alongside the facilitator; more may have attended without speaking. The discussion moved into site development and partner maturity, which the facilitator said was not expected going in.
• Notes are generated with AI assistance and anonymized before publishing — participant names and identifying program details are left out below. Organizations, software, and public resources mentioned by name are kept in for reference.

MOUs & Sub-Awards: How Two Leads Handle Them

• One lead organization, which applies for the VITA grant on behalf of a multi-county coalition, treats its partners as subgrantees. Each partner signs an MOU covering its budget, the number of tax returns it is expected to complete, and the understanding that if a partner falls short of the match in its proposed budget, the lead reimburses federal expenses only up to the level that the match supports.
• New this year: the lead has been covering all costs tied to the coalition’s shared appointment line and will now ask subgrantees for a 5% overage. This is not deducted from the grant or paid back to the lead — partners must document additional match equal to 5% of their federal expenses (extra returns or donated space of that value) on top of their regular match. Match includes in-kind volunteers and funding, following the national standard.
• Another participant, whose MOU is basic and copied forward year to year, liked the idea of writing match expectations directly into the MOU. Their partners range from sites that support the program a great deal to sites that are little more than a space with an internet connection, so they are considering language expecting volunteer hours at the site. The current MOU mostly describes the partner as a host — space and some support — to keep the barrier to entry low.

Responding When Partners Fall Behind

• One lead sets weekly return goals with each partner during the season. If a partner is behind, they discuss the reason and what can be done, including corrective measures. If the goal is still missed, the conversation carries into the next season: what happened, whether the goal will be met next time, and whether something needs to be adjusted downward.
• The facilitator asked whether anyone uses a tiered escalation for partners similar to staff processes (verbal warning, then formal written warning). No one offered a response on the call.

Moving Sites Toward Independence

• Participants described a spectrum of sites. One called some sites “rotisserie sites” — set them up with books at the start of the year and check in at the end with cake and pizza — while at others they act as site coordinator. They want more sites able to operate independently so the lead is freed up for other work, and they have 50+ sites, including small nonprofits under their IRS grant that raise local funding (one partnered with a technology store for laptops; others still use pandemic-era Chromebooks).
• Another participant leads a coalition of over 20 partners that each run their own sites, with the lead conducting annual reviews. New sites typically start under the lead as a site, with the hope of “peeling them off” a couple of years later to apply for a subgrant. Some partners the participant expected to be gone by now prefer to stay. This year, a site of two years is becoming a subgrantee: a four-hour meeting covered eFIN access, what reporting will look like, and managing everything within TaxSlayer. It is the first such transition, so there is no formal plan yet — only a list to build one from. The lead still guides the site’s IRS work with the relationship manager, who is aware of the change. The hope is that thorough training avoids compliance problems seen at partners who have operated independently for years.
• The facilitator noted the IRS relationship is often the hardest part to hand off, since the SPEC relationship manager can seem like a moving target. Suggestions: define developmental milestones from a heavily supported new site to a full or “leading” partner; make clear that support changes rather than drops — shifting toward peer conversations about where the partner wants its service to go next and run-throughs of what the IRS might flag; and put the vision on paper and talk it through with the highest two-way-trust partners first. A participant confirmed that what would change is the lead’s personal time and recruiting help, not funding.
• One participant is having this conversation in a smaller area with long-standing sites whose return counts have not grown in four years; they are considering combining sites or finding a larger location, since some issues are space and others are volunteers. The facilitator suggested framing this around a vision of peer organizations, and noted it is not all about numbers — sometimes the numbers are right for the location.

Coalition Maturity & Funding Pathways

• As a coalition matures, it can decide which partner is best positioned to pursue a given grant. One lead organization pursuing the VITA grant makes sense, and likely the same lead for state funding. The facilitator noted that state funding usually arrives as an earmark to a single organization, often a state-level CAP, which redistributes it to other CAPs or organizations; states that run their own grant program open to local applicants are the exception. State funding often comes in at or above the VITA grant level, so the facilitator has been thinking about how coalitions can position themselves to pass funds through. State size matters too — smaller states cannot operate the way the largest can.

Starting New Sites & Testing Demand

• One participant’s MOUs are mostly with colleges, which require them as standard practice. For community groups requesting a site, they ask for “skin in the game” — providing intake volunteers — and some partners balk after a year of that work. The facilitator suggested conveying the vision for where a site could grow, with a smaller first step: an intake-only or drop-off model that trains site staff as intake volunteers to gauge demand, sometimes with a preparer on hand to guide them, or a staff person helping clients use MyFreeTaxes. The participant has tried both and reviews the numbers; one rural location took a full day for only two or three returns, which was not sufficient. The facilitator also mentioned a program using an intake site as its test case for demand.

Virtual VITA & Remote Intake Hubs

• The facilitator noted virtual VITA took off first in a very rural state and in a dense major city, where travel makes it hard to get volunteers to sites. In the city model, a bank’s volunteers stayed at their headquarters after hours preparing returns while intake happened at multiple community partners. Another example: a university program whose students prepared returns for clients waiting at rural county cooperative extension offices. Asked whether volunteers gather at a hub rather than at home, the facilitator said yes.
• The facilitator sees strong potential in remote intake paired with a hub that has many volunteers but few clients, since it sidesteps the challenge of getting taxpayers up to speed and uploading documents in fully virtual VITA. Another challenge is whether to have volunteers work from home or together in a lab with more support. This suits colleges and corporate volunteer pools in locations inconvenient for clients.
• On corporate partners: a pool of volunteers is often the first step toward the company funding the work. An MOU can set how many volunteers they provide; companies want to build community goodwill, so know what you want from them (including how they get to advertise), and expect them to want the same deal as everyone else.

Funding Updates & Next Steps

• The facilitator asked whether anyone had updates on Prosperity Now funding support. Two opportunities were noted: outreach funding around Trump accounts (530A), for which participants had reportedly not heard back, and site funding, for which someone said announcements were expected September 29.
• The facilitator floated drafting a model MOU versus gathering and sharing MOUs that partners are willing to share. A participant said seeing what others do would be helpful and offered to send their blank MOU; the facilitator will work on it.
• Notes from these calls are posted on VITAQuality.org, the facilitator’s site for VITA-focused work, with a link to a Dropbox where completed materials are added; new items are also shared with the listserv.

The Society for Free Tax Assistance  •  VITAquality.org  •  a project of JC Craig Consulting