We divided our work into two parts -- what are our goals, and how will we know when we get there? Ok, three parts -- finally, we prioritized our goals.

We want to influence the tax prep industry. We will create a mobilized constituency for advocacy. We want to increase the customer base in order to negotiate better products and prices for products. We want to reform taxes. We want to maximize all sources of income. We want to increase the percentage of eligible people who are getting EITC.

We identified a lot of different metrics. Some we can achieve today, and some we cannot. Let's identify ten indicators to monitor to measure our impact on well-being. Let's increase the share of overall income for the bottom, say, 20% of the population -- this would be difficult to find data for. We want to find opportunities to interact with our clients year-round. We can easily measure the percentage of unbanked clients.

We will need a new business plan to accomplish all of the goals that we established.

We talked about low-hanging fruit. Employers and Chambers of Commerce are already advocates for the EITC. Faith-based groups, CEO's, small businesses and banks will be strong allies with which to create some quick wins. The mobilizing model for EITC is interesting because the biggest challenge is that people just don't know about it.

We should do advocacy because we are best positioned to do it. We are poised to do a lot of advocacy work at the local level because of the partnerships that we already have with employers, volunteers, local government, faith based groups and employers. A national organization should develop a media kit to be used locally, create a national internship program, and develop volunteer training (including advocacy issues). We should increase awareness and involvement in the larger issues at the local level. This movement could also influence the financial sector -- in addition to government, we need to be doing a lot of advocacy in the private sector.

We talked a lot about online training. We should develop an online tool to help new volunteers understand the EITC issues. We talked a lot about standards in testing, forms, procedures, etc. We want to develop more information about the various models that local organizations are using in various parts of the country -- what's happening in urban areas, rural areas, small towns, and in areas with different demographics. Each location is clearly unique, but it would be useful to learn about different strategies and toolsets that are being used in different areas. Online training is not just for volunteers, but also technical training and management training.

We talked about a national brand. We do not want to replace local brands, but we want to develop consistent national messages.

We walked about capacity building quite a bit. Fund raising is very important.

Training seemed to be our highest priority, and fundraising is very important as well.

We started by brainstorming a list of possible issues. Refund splitting will be upon us next year -- we will need to deal with this. Market research is critical.

What about products and services that frame the asset-building discussion? Shared Value Cards are important. Checking and savings accounts are important. Lifetime savings and incentive programs are useful.

We talked quite a bit about the insurance industry. There is more capital flowing through the insurance industry than anywhere else. How can we access that?

What can we do in the next 18-24 months to contribute to asset-building? We need to get our hands around refund-splitting. What is the best way that our providers can advise their customers? How can we partner with the financial institutions to allow this to happen? We need to understand what market research has been done and what new customer research that we want to complete. We want to develop 1-2 new products to launch to our market. We want to learn from the best practices of the credit counseling industry.

We also want to engage in policy advocacy. We want to push a Savings for Working Families Act, but there are some questions. Let's remove the asset limits. Let's working with the New American Foundation and others to develop a policy agenda. We need to develop partnerships with broader constituents.

Shared Value Cards seems to be one of our top priorities. We also need market research.

We seem to have come a long way since this morning. There is still tremendous debate about the high-level mission debate, but at a more tactical level, there is quite a lot of agreement. There is still a lot of information for us to grapple with before we move forward.

At some level this can be a little depressing. It is easy to be broad and visionary as an individual. For a coalition to work, we have to embrace a lot of different organizations, but we can only focus on doing a few things.

We are trying to hone in on a few national priorities that will help local organizations. This effort will develop some tools to help local organizations to advance their own missions. There is not a single thing for us all to do, but we will all be helped in the long run.

What is the next step for all of this work? We are all overwhelmed already. The NCTC is already overwhelmed as well. There is a small group meeting this afternoon that will be taking your input to develop recommendations for the NCTC Steering Committee.

It is an interesting contrast between the specificity of the action planning groups versus the conflict and confusion in the groups talking about the big vision. These next steps are great and should be done. But are they enough. The easier questions to answer are the short-term tactical ones. There are some things that simply must be done to make our organizations run a little more smoothly. Also remember that most private sector companies have to operate for 3-4 years before they figure out what business they are in. The confusion that we're feeling is very natural, and it is very common right now in the financial services industry -- the entire industry is reinventing itself on the fly.

We will never have a concrete vision for what the future will look like. You have to look for some nuggets. Identify one or two or three good things to pursue, and those nuggets of capacity and development will lead us towards even more things in the future. We should not feel bad that we don't have a concrete vision and action plan -- this is how life works.

The process that we used in this workshop is a very open and democratic. We can still narrow down our priorities to a few key actions. But this is the process that we're engaged in. The short term incremental actions are actually quite clear. The higher level vision is naturally the more difficult work.

Be careful who we compare ourselves to. A single organization needs to have a single vision and be on the same page. In this room we have over 30 organizations represented, and there are over 500 organizations in our industry nationwide. It should not be surprising that we are not walking out of this meeting with a single goal and action plan.

You started this organization five years ago. We have come a very long way. We have accomplished a lot of our original goal -- to provide quality, low-cost tax preparation services. Now that we have developed the tax prep "baby" to a young adult, we can start to develop the asset-building "baby". But the two "products" are at very different stages of their development. We can have very tactical and lucid discussions about tax prep, because it is a very well-developed system. The asset-building product is in its very beginning phases of development -- it must by definition be nebulous and unclear. It is a very generative and powerful creative tension to hold these two "babies" together in our minds.

These tensions have existed for a long time in this field. It is very important that we have expanded this conversation to include a larger audience. We have assembled a very powerful and diverse team here. This even includes private "competitors" like Intuit, and Quicken and H&R Block and several banks. They have participated with us very actively and I want to thank them. Thank you all for participating.

Thank you all for coming. So many people have worked very hard to put this event together. We appreciate all of your efforts!