California Earned Income Tax Credit Outreach: Community Connect Program California Earned Income Tax Credit Outreach: Community Connect Program

Increasing awareness of tax credit eligibility for students.

In partnership with Golden State Opportunity Foundation, the Community Connect Program, formerly the Tax Credit & Public Benefits Outreach program, aims to provide students with knowledge about tax credit eligibility. The California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC) and Young Child Tax Credit (YCTC) helps to disrupt generational cycles of poverty and improve health outcomes by providing tax credits to parenting and non-parenting working students. Proven to be among the most effective anti-poverty mechanisms, these tax credits are consistently underutilized. Every year low-income Californians leave more than $2 billion dollars in state and federal EITC unclaimed. At the same time, the EITC is shown to disrupt generational cycles of poverty and improve health outcomes, particularly for single parents and their children.

To encourage more eligible Californians to claim these tax credits, the Golden State Opportunity has created CalEITC4Me, a public-private campaign focused on the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC). A groundbreaking campaign, CalEITC4Me utilizes innovative digital outreach and storytelling, grassroots organizing, comprehensive media strategy, public advocacy, and mobile messaging to educate and empower low-income workers around the CalEITC.

In a collaborative effort, select campus partners from the Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Los Angeles, and Riverside counties are awarded outreach grants to share informational resources and social media messages and images to encourage eligible students and surrounding communities to claim the CalEITC/YCTC by filing their taxes.