Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Alright. In your lap. Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Tuesday, 02/17/2026 at 09:04 in the in the morning. We're here to start our day to have some discussions on micro business lending. I know we'll have to have someone in from weatherization at another point this week. So this morning, we have Liz and Lindsay with us.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Did you

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: both want our Yeah. We both come on. Okay. You can use that that chair.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Thanks for having us.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thanks for coming in. We always like to discuss micro business lending. It's something that we have championed through this in this committee for a long time.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: So I'm just gonna share my screen here. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having us. I hope you all had a nice weekend, nice snowy weekend. My name is Liz Sharf. I'm the director of community economic development and food security at Capstone Community Action. And this is my colleague. I'm Rosie Gray, and I'm one

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: of the financial and business coach counselors at Capstone.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: So thank you for having us come in to talk about our financial capabilities program. This slideshow that I'm going to share with you focuses on three programs that really do support the micro business or two programs and micro business that support each other in order to work with some of the smallest businesses in Vermont. And you mentioned, Chair Marcotte, the lending. So we are the micro business development program. We are not a micro lender, however, and Rosie can speak to this when we're talking about the micro micro business, we do make referrals to businesses like community capital and other lending organizations. Okay, so if you don't know about community action agencies, we are statewide. So we cover every county and town in Vermont, and these are our executive directors. So we have Brock Community Action Capstone, which is where Rosie and I work, CDOEO up in the Champlain Valley, NECA, the Northeast Kingdom, as well as SEVCA in Southeast Vermont. So anyone who is income eligible for any one of our programs, and there's lots of different income eligibilities depending on the program, are able to utilize a community action agency in their neighborhood. So Rosie and I are here to talk about the financial capabilities program. So community actions are really designed to help folks who live in poverty, not just meet their basic needs, but also have resources available to help them move out of poverty. We believe at the community action agencies that helping people on the most basic level is super important, but it's also just as important to provide support to help people move away from poverty. And those supports that the Community Action Network offers are our micro business program, our volunteer income tax assistance program, and our financial counseling and coaching programs. We are coming to the legislature this year to ask. We have a big ask for micro business, which is an increase of about $500,000 above the base, which is currently $493,000 in the base budget. We are requesting $550 for our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, which is $150,000 increase from the base. And then we are requesting for our financial coaching, which is very part and parcel to supporting our micro business program. We're requesting 500,000 in base funding for this program. So I'm going to spend a little time going over VITA tax program, and then I'm going to have Rosie go and take over for the micro business development and financial coaching. But before I do that, I just want to show you this sort of Venn diagram of how these three programs really do intersect and are important in supporting one another. And I know for House Commerce, micro business is really what your focus is here today. But what I want to do is educate you on the importance of these other two programs that really are critical to the success of the micro business program. So right now we are in the throes of filing taxes. Maybe you filed yours. I haven't filed mine yet, but there is the VITA program, which stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. And we do no charge tax prep and filing for people who make $69,000 or less. And you'll see in this Venn diagram, we also work with small businesses. So we are doing tax preparation, social security impacts, and schedule Cs for micro businesses. For our financial coaching program, we really are helping households with basic personal finances. But on the business side, which Rosie will speak to, we really often have to start at the foundation, which is personal finance before someone can begin a micro business. So and you'll see just a few little anecdotes from folks worked who with our coaches and how these programs have been impactful to them. So I'll just briefly go over VITA tax and then I'll have Rosie move on to financial coaching and micro business. Each year, the income changes a little bit, but the $69,000 is no matter your family size. So if you're one person or if you're four people, the income limit is 69,000. So in general, we are working with low income folks, a lot of older folks who need to have their homesteads filed. And we are certified and trained volunteers. So the majority of the program is run by volunteers, but we do have staff at all five of the locations. These staff people and this is critical, we're not just doing stuff during tax season, we're also outside of tax season. So when folks come to us with a scary letter from the IRS or they haven't gotten their tax refund or they look at their tax bill and there's like, where's my property tax adjustment? That's where our full time staff person comes in to try to figure out how can they help this person resolve the issue they may have with their taxes. In 2025, we contributed to tax refunds that exceeded $5,000,000 that went right back into our community. And that included 2,400,000 in tax credits. So those tax credits are like the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, education tax credits. And we are requesting an additional 150,000 in the 400,000 that's currently in the base. And that is through the treasurer's offices where we have that grant. And so the VITA program, as part of what we do, is supporting micro businesses. I think in another handout we have, we did last year, just over, like, they're just under four fifty Schedule Cs, which means we were working with a lot of sole entrepreneurs who had their taxes filed with us. And it's a great resource because that's just one less cost that they have to put towards their business when we have folks who are able to support them. And you'll see here, this is just an overview. We had 115 volunteers averaging seventy hours per volunteer. We did just over 5,000 returns for the state and did a number of families who received the child tax credits. Alrighty, Rosie is going to take us into the financial coaching.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah, so thank you for having us here again. Nice to see you again. So our financial coaching program is more than just teaching people about their personal budgets and whatnot. I have to say that we have, in the last four years, we have a really strong foundation for people when they want to come and work with us. And we have offered classes and sometimes we have as many as 36, sometimes it's as many as or as little as one. It's still impactful when people come and they want to learn. And we teach these classes from usually mid September to about May. Sunshine comes out

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: and people don't want to come

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: to class anymore. But we encourage all of our people to come to these classes because they get about a year's worth of what they just get one on one working with a financial coach by coming to about twelve hours worth of classes. We offer real practical I'm talking practical guidances for people such as when they are looking at creating a spending plan. Well, what does that really even mean? Right. So we will work with them, show them how to use different templates and whatnot to really hone in on their money and help them understand like what resources are out there for them. I personally come from a county from a very large family. I have seven siblings. And so I know what that's like. And I get right on that personal level with people, with letting them know that it's okay to be right where you're at, but there are tools and resources like our Community Action who can help you through these steps, and literally lift them up. So we've got an amazing credit and budgeting program. Our coaching is, I think it's stellar. We help people with their debt management. In this last year, I'm having a lot of elderly folks and people who are disabled calling in trying to navigate, right? Like, what do I do next? Or I have debt. We work very closely with, excuse me, hireability and ICANN. So for some of our people, they are either receiving SSI or SSDI, so they're disabled, but they're trying to figure out how do I navigate this thing called life with maybe as little as a $10.49 dollars a month. How do I live off from that? So we teach them the resources and the tools and those relationships last more than just twelve months. There are people I've been with Capstone for almost five years now. There are still people that I'm working with. Last year I helped the family, both people disabled, and they've got into their home, a dream home for them. First time homeowners in their entire family, nobody's ever owned a home before. That was huge for them. They still call me every single month just to touch base. This is where we're at. So just to give you some numbers, last year we had seven ninety eight Vermonters received one on one financial coaching. Those are when we say seven ninety three, those are unduplicated, which means you get counted once, but you might've come in for 12 times to see a financial coach. We also had ten fifteen Vermonters sign up for our financial capabilities classes. We call them money moves. If any of you are ever interested in sitting in on our classes, they're Wednesdays at noon time and our micro businesses Wednesdays from nine to eleven. They're informational, like there's so much information that we can provide to people in these classes. Last year, 145 new Americans participated in classes and coaching. We also help people increase their savings. To me, that's like so exciting. Are any of you familiar with the Brook Street High School in Barrie now? So it is a alternative school that Capstone supports for teen

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: part

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: of our Head Start program. Yes, sorry. It's part of

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: our Head Start program where if they're under the age of 26, usually moms who are trying to get their high school diploma. So I usually go in there once or twice a year and work with the ladies that are part of that program. And it's special to me because I was a teen mom and I didn't have somebody to come in and start teaching me about some of these real life things. So last week we were talking about savings and I pulled up a calculator and I was like, what would a $100 do if you could save $100 a month? So we started doing the math and we compounding interest. Over forty years at 3%, if they say they'd have about $400,000 by the time they were 65. Two of the girls immediately was, that high is that big. She was like, I think I can quit smoking now. It makes sense to me. I spent $83 a month on cigarettes. And the other girl was like, I can save $64 I just got to figure out where I can get that other. So the wheels just start, right? They see hope. Right? And that's straight to my heart when they have somebody who's going to believe in them, that they can do this thing called life. They just need a little something out there. Yeah. And we help a lot of people with their credit scores. And this last year has been a lot of a lot of elderly ladies, I'm afraid to say, who are getting scammed, terribly scammed by romances or just giving money when they shouldn't. All right, micro business. So last year, six sixty four runners utilized our coaching program. We helped assist 77 new business startup, 35 expansion, and last year 524,000 ish in capital was accessed by 50 different businesses, and there were 52 new full time jobs created. I will also say that I work directly with a company. I won't give any names, but I help people who are deemed unable to return to work. And I'm a huge part of this return to work program. And they seek me out when self employment is really their last option. And I've been working with a gentleman for over almost three years now. And I can say that his proposal for buying a business that's been pretty successful is probably one of the biggest, I don't want to say cases, but people that I worked with who's actually going to avoid having to use disability because disability will not pay this person what they once upon a time need, but the self employed and their thirty years of knowledge is going to be able to get them back to where they once were. And again, we have our amazing micro business classes. Those tend to be pretty popular. And again, we service anybody through Vermont or even if somebody from Arizona pops in. We're happy to serve them. We always direct them back to our community action to have that one on one with their financial coaches or their micro business coaches up there. But we do work very much in partnership with a lot of different agencies. We are that point where people come to and we're like, we know that you're the resource.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: And I think too, I just want to share that Venn diagram piece of connecting the dots. As an example, last year, because I'm also one of the tax preparers, I was working with a gentleman. He was probably in his mid to late 20s. And he had started a business as a metal collector. So going in, collecting metal and then selling it to the salvage yard. And he came in with this binder that was very organized. And he was like, I'm here to do my taxes. But he hadn't quite organized exactly how he needed to for a business. And he admitted, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing. He said, My mother told me to keep every receipt. And so that's what he had, was all of his receipts. But what he hadn't done was keep track of his mileage. He had just kept track of his gas receipts, which you can do that, but you have to do that in perpetuity moving forward. And it's not the best option when you're filing your taxes to use your gas receipts. It's better to keep your mileage. So I knew right away that he needed to see Rosie. And so I did an extension for his taxes and I said, We're not going to do your taxes right away. You're going to work with Rosie. He's still working with her. And she got him ready to be able to come back to me and I was able to do his taxes. And they spent a lot of time figuring out how much mileage he had done that year based on his gas receipts and his trips that he had recorded. But now he's in a much better place. And you provide financial counseling to the couple as well.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Absolutely. And so for those of you who don't know, I was a twenty year business owner in Lamoille County. I also happen to have a background in accounting. And so I'm always, always, and it's one of our first classes is bookkeeping and recordkeeping. You're not going to learn to be a bookkeeper, but we can certainly set you up and lightheartedly I let people know like, do these five things in three years, you'll probably hear from the IRS or say one or the other, right? But this individual this year has come back and it's like, I've got all my stuff together. I just want to review it with you. I didn't do QuickBooks, but I've kept everything else on Excel spreadsheet. Great. Last week I had, another micro business, client reach out to me and she said, Rosie, I took my books this year to a CPA and she said to me, oh my goodness, if all of my small businesses could come in as well prepared as what you are, she was like, thank you so much. And so this person started out as an individual wanting to just start a little side, I call it a side hustle. Extra income, right? Gig economy. Exactly. Supplemental, right? So it was that individual one on one session that led me to the conversation of let's get you into the classes when you can get there. And then we keep working together individually that finally three years from when she first reached out, she's now actually using a CPA to do her taxes because we talk about paying the appropriate amount of taxes, right? Because when we're small businesses, we need to pay the appropriate amount. So it's educational. Here are just

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: a few little testimonies of folks who have benefited from working with a business coach. There's a book for NECA, CDOYO and Capstone. And a lot of these businesses are supplemental. So it is not unusual for a business coach to sit down with someone who has an idea and say to that person, it's not time to put your W-two job Let's keep that job and work on building your business. Or in some cases, even saying, this is maybe not the right time to be doing this, or this isn't a good investment for you to be making. Don't cash out your $4.00 1 ks to do this business. And so having a very neutral party like the community action agencies to be able to really assess someone's situation, I think, super important, especially for some of our lowest income people who may not necessarily have been given some of the best advice or didn't grow up necessarily or don't have the education to be able to make decisions without having a trusted partner like the community action agencies. And the financial literacy piece or financial coaching really is foundational, right? Like when somebody's coming in and they want to start

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: a new business, whether they're being sent by themselves or they're being referred through hireability, right? Like if somebody hasn't found the skill to save because they don't think that they can, well, we need to get that skill honed in, right? Because they're going to have to learn to save to pay the taxes, right? Otherwise they're going to come back in a couple of years and say, Rosie, I didn't save and now I have a tax bill. How am I going to pay it? Financial coaching, micro business, they really do go absolutely, in my opinion, hand in hand. Last week, a young gal reached out to me. We've only met a couple of times. She was like, I normally get like $3,000 back for a tax refund. This year I'm getting 9. I need to buy a car. And I said, okay, let's press pause before you go buy one. Let's start, let's do this research. Let's not jump right into it and buy the first $6,000 car that you find. Right? Like, it's really like too sudden. And she agreed. She's like, okay, so I'm going to help teach her to like, make this, make the phone calls together. You got to call the insurance company. Right? Like, all the things we got to think about when we're buying a vehicle because it's not just I bought a vehicle and I don't have a car. There are many things that we all know go wrong with cars, especially used ones.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: I think this story here too, just as a great testament to the amount of time it takes to work with someone in a micro business. And this story here, this person really was wanting to do a food business and ended up working with the coach at CDOEO and got a $10,000 hireability funding, which is what Rosie was telling you about working with micro business. They have access to that if they're really doing the things that they need to do to build a business. And then they also got through the Vermont Community Loan Fund an additional $50,000 And now they are very active. They've got part time employees, and this was over a couple of years. And think, and in terms of the micro lending, a lot of the folks with whom we work often don't necessarily have access to traditional lending. Their credit might not be good enough. And so part of that financial counseling is getting their credit up enough so that they can borrow, or at least that they can potentially be a good candidate for something like the Vermont Community Loan Fund or what's the one I mentioned earlier in Montpelier? Community Capital. Of Vermont. And those are places that will sometimes take a higher risk when they're loaning to some of these very small businesses. And think

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: that's it. I just want to touch on the micro business too, is that when we are working with people, as Liz mentioned earlier, helping people decide when to and when not to get rid of that W-two job. Kind of that bookkeeping class, talk about, have you looked at ssa.gov? Do you have you worked 40 quarters on the books? Right? Because sometimes people don't realize that they don't qualify. And so now's not a time for you to give up that W-two job because you haven't worked enough in the system, right? So that you can even collect social security. So there's that piece. There's also a lot of people that we work with who are disabled, who want to do, they want to work, right? And they come to us because they're trying to figure out and navigate how can I either start a small business or do something, right? And then we help them and navigate with them. I had somebody a couple of years ago to come to me, had a grand dream, when we sat down and let's like peel this onion back a little bit here. Let's talk about your personal finances. What's going to come up? And unfortunately, had to be very honest and say, at this point, I don't think being, moving yourself into a small business is the right move for you. I'm going to support you if that's what you choose to do. But I don't think at this time it makes sense, right? Like you've got a lot of other stuff happening in your life, throwing a business on top of it and creating a brand new business from boots on the ground, that's going to take a lot. So that's hard to deliver to some people because they really want to do their own thing.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah, so now we're open to questions if you have questions or comments.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: One of the most difficult industries for small businesses are restaurants. Do they qualify for micro business or? They could, they could.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: I personally, and I'm only representing three of the counties, I don't see a lot of people coming to me to open restaurants, what I see is people coming to me saying, I'd like to make goods and bring it to the farmer's market, I would like to make or have a food cart or one lady wanted to do an ice cream cart, right? So I see that much smaller level where I think CBOEO is they see more of population of people who want to actually start restaurants.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: And micro business is technically five or fewer, including Most the of the people with whom we work tend to be sole entrepreneurs. And I think on the slide we showed the full time equivalent jobs, a lot of those are combined. Like somebody has a part time, they've got two part time people that equals one full time equivalent.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Or they might work full time, but business is what we would consider half because they're not spending all of their time on the business.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: So we're looking at 2,200,000.0. Is it in the budget at all right now? Any of this? Yes. So right now we have 493,000 in micro business development. And that doesn't quite cover one full time equivalent. We do end up having to subsidize with other funding to support the salary of a business coach. Salary of a business coach, depending on the community action agency, can be as high as like 57, 58, and as low as like 52, maybe. But that includes all the benefits and indirect and all that. I see the 2,200,000.0. I'm just trying to figure out how much of that is not currently in the budget, or is all of that not? At the bottom where it says triple the impact, this slide right here. That's the one I'm looking at. On the bottom. So we are looking at a 500,000 increase in micro business, a 500,000 increase in financial coaching, and a 150,000 increase in base funding. We're looking for 1,150,000 is the total request. And right now, I have confirmed that currently in the budget are the 493,000 for micro business, the 170,300 for financial coaching, and the 400,000 for VITA. Those are already in the base budget. So we're really looking for increases in those programs. And I just want to comment about the increase in the micro business because it is a big increase. I understand that. And really, I think as a network of community action agencies, we are really wanting to focus on the economic development piece of our agencies and really trying to not just help people in emergency situations, but also help those same people move out of poverty. As you know, Vermont is an expensive place to live and folks have to often have extra income. I'm just going to sort of go slightly off topic to tell you this story. And I'm sure you've heard these stories many times. But this weekend, met a young woman who is in her probably mid to late 20s. She was offered a job by the state of Vermont working for the emergency management. And she had to turn it down because she couldn't find housing. And we can't be losing young people in this state and we have to be providing services to keep the people here. We know we're losing our young people. We know they go away, but we need them to come back. My kids are gone. I sure hope they come back, but I don't know if they're going to be able to find a place to live. This young woman, do you know what she does to live here? She does trusted house sitters, which means she moves from house to house watching people's pets. She doesn't get paid to do it. She just does it and she gets a free place to live. But she has to constantly be looking for a place to stay while she's working remotely. And it's just not okay that young people don't have affordable places to live. And so if we, as a community action agency, we're really sort of pivoting, we need to be there as that organization that can teach people about personal finance, key people here, can help them with their budget, can help them with small businesses so that we don't lose more people than we already are at this time.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Jonathan?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Good morning. The question I had actually pertains to the financial coaching, which I think we were just on this topic, and this has to do with one of the elements in the slide that talked about raising an increase from about a point three full time to a one point zero per agency. So I'm guessing maybe it's so the question I had was, does demand outstrip supply by three or four times? Are you seeing?

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: So from the financial coaching piece, we yeah. Unfortunately, CDOEO in Burlington and Capstone in Central Vermont, we have built a financial coaching program over the last twelve years that has really been able we've been able to leverage private funds to help support that program. We originally started out with a grant from the Northfield Savings Bank Foundation, which really was a crucial piece of funding that allowed us to hire full time financial coaches at both organizations. And ever since then, we've been able to leverage through private philanthropy, through a couple of years ago, got a grant through the Department of Financial Regulation. And right now, I don't have that money. We're using some community services block grant money that we have to support. And actually, I don't have a full time financial coach right now. I have a very part time one, and I've got Rosie who does both micro business and financial coaching. And so the other agencies really don't have someone to be able to provide that service. And as a result, that does the micro business because you need that person to be able to sometimes support. Oftentimes, and we're lucky because they're the same people, Rosie and Mary, they're both trained. They're both micro business coaches and financial coaches. So they know when to recognize that they need to start at the beginning with someone with financial coaching before they go into the business. The other community action agencies often just don't have the need, but they don't have the person to be able to provide that service. And so we really are looking to ramp up the financial coaching piece for full time equivalents so that they can continue to support the micro business. The question, I'm not sure if I answered your question entirely, but in terms of doubling our efforts for micro business, need the staff to be able to Rosie can't take on more than 100 people a year, 130 maybe or something you do in businesses. I mean, that's a lot. She's constantly working. So she's not able to drum up other business, but there are other people out there who could benefit from a business coach and a financial coach.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: And we cross teach. We also cross teach through each agency. So in my five years of being at Capstone, whenever NECA has had somebody new, CVOEO, SEDCA, our Community Action has had the longest standard micro business and financial coaches on staff. So when there's a shortage, they call us, right? And then when new people come on, we collaborate with the other agencies to say, this is what we're doing. We can team up, right? We can teach you, we'll help you get through your AFCPE course. And it really just goes, they all go hand in hand. Right? Yeah. Did we answer your question?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Not quite. I was hoping to know if there was an awareness of an unmet need and an estimate of that in sort of moving from a 0.3 to a one point zero across all five agencies. I think that was sort of an important thing for me to understand that perhaps in the number of in the outreach you're getting and you just can't get that time because you have that cap of 100 that we just heard for Rosie. So I'm just sort of hoping to know or what I'd like to hear some assurances that there is a need that would require ramping that up from about a point three to a one point zero? That's what I'm asking about.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: I would so I I can't give you a number. I can't say that, you know, x number of people have called NECA and they've been turned away. I don't have that number. But what I can say is that when there has been someone full time, we can easily meet the need of 125 people that agency serves. And so if it's not there, you're not necessarily going to seek out the services. But I do believe based on historically when there has been more staff available, during COVID, for example, there was a lot of money. So people were able to ramp up their programs. And so we were able to serve more people. And to be perfectly honest, I think there's a greater need than ever for this kind of work.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: I could answer that a little bit only because one, I'm a numbers person. So Jonathan, last year we went to doing our intakes online as far as when somebody wants financial coaching or micro business. So last March, I believe we created that. So anybody who wants to come and have a one on one or classes reaches out through this intake. In the last eleven months, I've received over 200, I think it was like two zero four or two zero five last week when I looked. So two zero five people have reached out just to our community action alone. Depending on what they're asking for, they will either get an individual one on one with us or they will go into our classes. So when the schedules are full and we're booked out two, three weeks, we're going to encourage them to get into class first and get the wheel started. And then we'll plug them into one on ones, individual coaching. That's kind of how I've been hamstring that. And what I'm like for business as of last year, I would say, I have about 160, I want to say ish people. So in the last year, over 300, let's call it three sixty, three seventy, three seventy people have reached out for micro business and or financial coaching. That's a lot of, like, can't service that many people. I do as many as I can.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: And I'm even taking on some people. And these are folks too. Some of them, I'm working with someone right now I've worked with over ten years. So appreciate

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: that number. That's helpful to me. So thank you very much for Rosie for that sort of sense of just how many times someone's knocking on the door, it's almost every single day. So it sounds like.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Oh, yeah. Great.

[Amy Schulberger (VCAP)]: Thank you.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Yep. And I know CBOEO has a wait list of about four weeks for their micro business for someone to get into a coaching session. Yep. Is

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: there a way to understand all five agencies, what the demand is? We like to look at data. Sure. You're asking us for to make a recommendation for half $1,000,000 to expand, but we need to understand that the demand is there, and I think that's what Representative Cooper was getting at. And so, if we, you know, I know you're successful here, and see the OEO, and, you know, there's successes there, but I know up my way, it doesn't seem to be a high demand. Is it because we don't have anyone in that position or, you know, I think those are the kinds of things we need to understand. Where we're gonna grow at, which agencies need to grow and is the demand there for them to grow.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: For micro business or for financial coaching?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: For both of them.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: So I recently spoke with one of the coaches up in NECA. And as far as micro business, their population up there, they get a really big population of 60 and over. I I don't mean, think I will do you want to start a small business? Mean, you already have a supplemental income coming in hopefully. This is

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: more supplemental.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: You understand what I'm saying? And their coaches up there and I don't know exactly what their numbers are, but they definitely have demand there, maybe not as great in micro business, but the one micro business counselor is also a financial They're doing it in tandem also. But I have a question, which is if we were to receive this funding, what would you like to see from us as an agency, like statewide? And I think one of them is you would like to see maybe more data around what that need is. So I know we collect our intakes online. I think CBOE does, but I don't think the other three agencies, like if we had that capability of bringing to the table those numbers, how does that impact a decision?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Sure makes it a whole lot easier for us to recommend to appropriations. And it also shows appropriations, they're looking at data too. So they're more likely to say yes or no. So I think the more data you have that justifies the ask that you're asking from us, helps make those decisions easier. And especially now that we're in really difficult budgeting times, we need to make sure that wherever we're recommending money to go is going to bring a return on investment to the state.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah. And I think excuse me. We can certainly reach out to each one of the community action agencies and let them know if they can provide, if they have any details about what may be their wait list. And I think one of the struggles is that if you don't have You can't build your capacity without having the base to be able to start building a program. And I will use Capstone as an example. I started out in Rosie's position and we really worked really hard to make a name for ourselves, to really get out there, to be partnering with organizations so that people knew that we were there and available. And so as a result, places like CDOEO and Capstone, because it's sort of a snowball effect. You start with a small amount and then you build and build. And that's what we've done. And we have great staff to continue to build these programs. And we'd like to see that for the other community action agencies as well. They just don't necessarily have the same amount of money available for discretion to be able to support. At times like now, when things are at risk of losing our federal funding, right? I mean, right now we have it, but are we going to have it next year? I don't know. Things are hard. You know this. You're aware of all this. What extras do you need to put in place on how you're talking to people and how you're serving people in order to maintain the federal funding is another question. So it might be available to you, but it might be against your business values to provide it in the way that the federal requirements are asked. Yes, yep, yep. So I know we've had that issue in other places also. But just to reinforce share of our thoughts. And for anybody coming to our committee asking for money this year, the more data the stories are lovely, and it's helpful for us to have understanding of what you do, but without the data, it's hard for us to advocate for what you are asking. Amy

[Amy Schulberger (VCAP)]: Schulberger, I represent VCAP. I just wanted to let you know I can send you a one pager that has the statewide impact for asset building. So this isn't necessarily the additional demand, but it shows the numbers currently serve statewide, and it's a little bit broader than the data that was in the PowerPoint presentation. They do have a statistic on here that a little over 22.5% of our launchers have income volatility, so that would be sort of an indication of who might be looking for this kind of a service, if it were available statewide. And we will reach out to the other CAPs and get different numbers from each of agencies.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That what's the demand going to be, or what's the anticipated demand going to be? Are we paying for something that won't be used that often? And so would those monies be better directed somewhere else where maybe you're at Capstone or CBOEO, there should be more money directed because you have the populations? Those are the types of things. So I think it's good for us to understand what each agency is doing and how we can help them increase if they had the need, how can we help increase the

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: I'll give a quick example about the tax program. So before, we didn't have really any money from the state from the tax program. And so we relied on something called the IRS VITA grants, which is basically based on how much you output. So the more you output, the more you get. So SEVCA is an example of an organization that did something like 200 or 300 taxes a year. Meanwhile, Capstone and CEO were doing twelve hundred, fourteen hundred. When they hired a full time equivalent, after two years, has about 1,200 taxes a year. So having that person available and being able to build the program, it took a couple of years, but they are serving now at the equivalent of what Capstone and CBOE are.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's the kind of data that really shows the value increasing. It's really an investment, right? So it shows that value.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: I think that if we did not have Liz and others who find these additional sources of money, right? A third of a program, we would have a lot of people we would not be serving because I'm only one person, right? So if there's one full time equivalent at each capstone, there's only so much one person could do. So there, I think our number would be, I think out of those two zero four people that reached out in the last eleven months, how many would we have really served? Well, all of them, if they come to class, but individually, I can only know one person. So Yeah. You were gonna say something. Sorry. I didn't raise my

[Unidentified Committee Member]: hand. No. It's great. First, very impressed with the services that you're offering to lower income from honors. We're all struggling, you know, the lower, again, the more you struggle, I think. This should answer my question. Maybe ask from a lack of knowledge, but I'm wondering, are there any entities in Vermont that I mean, you got three different types of services that you're offering. Are there any entities in Vermont that offer a similar service or are you guys pretty much it?

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: So for the tax program, there's also AARP that offers to older people, and that doesn't have an income requirement either. Which one?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: For the taxes.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: For the taxes.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: The tax program. So there's that program. In fact, they're sort of a part of our network. We kind of work together. And they have a lot more like the library that serves 40 people. So there's a ton of organizations, locations for AARP, far more than what we do for the Capstone. But they're serving, I think, sort of an equal number of people, but they're all older people.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So if you have people that could be served by AARP, you suggest that you try to move them so that it gives you more capacity. But if there's somebody else doing providing the service, is there a way you all can work together that you could move people, you know, the older people, to AARP for their service, and especially if they don't have an income limit, that would then give you more capacity to bring in people that are the younger people that need to come.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: I can kind of answer that a little bit, I think. So because I work with people all the time and are talking about their taxes. So recently, new micro business person has a great CPA here locally, this year signed up, was going to go through tax through Capstone and I highly recommend it. I was like, I said, I really want you to stick with your current CPA that you have. Yes, it's going to cost you 400 to $600 to get your taxes done. But this person is going to, not that our people can't help you strategically, but they're there to build the taxes out and get them done. A CPA is going to sit down with you and say, okay, these the deductions that you can take. These are the credits that are coming to you. And as it turns out, this person got a $30,000 grant for their micro business. So there are times when we are softly saying our FITA program is amazing, but stick with AARP. Yeah. Certainly,

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: we refer if there's someone, especially if they're over income and they're older, we refer them to AARP so that they know that that's available. Guess there's, mean, we both have limitations as to who we can serve. And then for micro business, I mean, there's the Vermont Small Business Association. So there are other services that are available. Oftentimes, the Vermont Small Business will refer to us, especially if it's someone who really needs sort of that handholding. Those are the folks we work with who require a little bit more handholding. Financial coaching, not really. I mean, there are banks that offer that. But as far as a non biased program, the community action agencies really take the lead on that. The United Ways do have workplace supports for working people that include some financial counseling. We've done quite a bit of partnering with them as well with our expertise in financial knowledge. In fact, they often will call us if there's something really hard. They'll be like, hey, I've got this problem with someone. Can you help with this? So I would say for income eligibility and for financial coaching, we are certainly the leads in the state. I don't really know of anyone that really does that the way we do.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: I'd just also say that there's also a trust factor, right? A lot of the people that we are serving, they've been coming to us for a long time. Talking about money is not easy for a lot of people, right? So to recommend that they go to see somebody else, they're like deer in head boots. They have that trusted partnership. Even when they move to, for example, my clients that moved to St. Johnsbury, they tried to find a house around here. They couldn't. Technically they're supposed to go to Neckenau, right? They still come and see me. They're like, Rosie, you're the only person that like sits with us and helps us and explains and you understand our situation and you're patient with us, right? So, we refer out when we feel it's appropriate for the person that we're working with.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: My time is open.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Thank you so much.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you very much. I think it's good for us to know partnering and you have these discussions with other nonprofits in the state, that you're all working together. You can shift things around when you need to. Help people the best that you can.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Really appreciate your time and your questions, and we will get back to you with as much data as we can.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Yeah, and it would be helpful if you do have other data points that you're looking for. We may not have them this year, but we can certainly put the ball in motion so that next year we can come in here and just

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think that's really a good idea. Mean, the more data, the better.

[Rosie Gray (Capstone Community Action)]: Yep.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Liz Sharf (Capstone Community Action)]: Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The committee were Office to lunch, get back to