For the past 42 years, Tax Help New Mexico has provided tax preparation services for low-income and elderly New Mexicans. Like many programs throughout the country, Tax Help New Mexico faced unique challenges during this tax season and identified new ways to best serve their community. To learn more about their work with Native communities in New Mexico and their participation in Prosperity Now’s Expanding Economic Opportunity through VITA project, we spoke with Jeffrey Ledbetter, the Director of Tax Help New Mexico. 

Hi Jeffrey, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Could you share a little bit about your role with Tax Help New Mexico? 

I became the director of Tax Help New Mexico 12 years ago when the organization was taken over by United Way of Central New Mexico as its parent organization. Our goal is to provide tax preparation services for low-income New Mexicans and elderly New Mexicans. We want to ensure the clients we serve are not taken advantage of by predatory lenders or preparers and receive the returns they’re entitled to. 

Can you talk a little about your work as part of Prosperity Now’s Rockefeller Grant Project? 

We’re just now completing the research stage of the grant project and are beginning to think about strategy and operations. During the research period, we identified several challenges facing the Native communities we serve. One of these is distrust in institutions that have misrepresented their interests in the past and that they will be victimized again is a very real fear for many of the Native communities we work with. Because of this, we know that part of our strategy must include developing a more trusting relationship with the community as an organization. We also plan to work with existing stakeholders that have the community's trust and will work with them to hire members of the Native community as Intake Specialists to help us implement our tax services. By doing so, we believe we can make our tax preparation services more accessible by forming an immediate connection with the community and including them directly in our organization’s work. The Navajo Nation includes a population of over 175,000 people in New Mexico many of whom live up to 60 miles apart. Expanding the scope of our work will be a challenge, but it starts with making accessibility and relationship building a priority for our organization. 

What has your experience been like working with Prosperity Now? 

Prosperity Now is really the perfect place to find any best practices or technical assistance about VITA services. Prosperity Now’s publications, such as the TON newsletter are often referenced by our organization when implementing our services.  Not only that, but Prosperity Now is also an absolute ally and sought out our organization for the Expanding Economic Opportunity through VITA project to help us expand our work with Native communities. 

Anything else to add? 

Currently we are putting so much of our effort into finding new volunteers. Trying to get back to the volume of services we provided pre COVID-19 will require recruiting at least 40 to 50 new volunteers. We’re offering certification and training courses this summer to prepare our volunteers. We also received a grant from Wells Fargo to pay college students, a stipend for participating in our program. We really want to increase student participation in the program overall and hope to make a push for more high school and college volunteers throughout the summer. If anyone reading this has experience working with high school and college volunteers, we’d love to hear from them through TON.  

For more information about Tax Help New Mexico, visit their website!