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33 Returning Applicants (including multi-year and prior-year recipients): You must address your performance against the prior award cycle return goal/Minimum Returns Expected (MRE). State whether you achieved 100% of MRE. If you did not achieve 100%, explain why MRE was not reached and describe corrective actions taken/planned to ensure the current-year program will meet the return goal. Program Plan 1. Describe your overall plans to implement this program and the steps that will be taken to ensure compliance with its rules and administrative guidelines. Describe what type of services will be provided for the elderly at the sites (e.g. e-file, other languages) - Be specific. Detail how the site locations were chosen (e.g. using demographic data and cite source). 2. Does your organization plan to have a secondary target audience (e.g., low-income), offering assistance in different languages, hearing impaired services, etc other than the elderly referenced under question 1? This is allowable under the grant as long as the elderly are the primary focus of your program). Please provide details of your planned secondary audience, if any. For example; offer of assistance in a different language, hearing-impaired services; or low-income. 3. Describe in detail your organization’s plan to accommodate for persons with disabilities at your site locations. 4. Describe the methods and resources that will be used to recruit volunteer assistors/quality reviewers, instructors, and coordinators. Describe your organizations volunteer retention plan for maintaining volunteers from year-to-year. 5. Describe plans to provide training for the volunteers. Include the length of the training, the audience and the level of each training class - basic, intermediate, advanced, etc. All volunteer and site coordinator training plans must be reviewed and approved by the local IRS SPEC Territory Office. IRS will provide “train the trainer” sessions, but it is the responsibility of the grant recipient to train their own volunteers. 6. Describe in detail your publicity plan for publicizing your TCE Program and site information and how your organization plans to recruit volunteers for your program. How will the elderly be targeted? 7. Describe planned actions to ensure that the volunteers provide quality service to elderly taxpayers.You must describe planned on-site quality review procedures and periodic meetings you will hold to draw the attention of volunteers to problem areas. (Please refer to Quality Site Requirements section). 8. Detail the steps that will be taken to ensure taxpayer privacy and to maintain the confidentiality of tax returns. (Please refer to Quality Site Requirements section). 9. Identify the geographic distribution of assistance and electronic filing sites. If plans include providing assistance in more than one state, list the anticipated number of sites for each state. Include in this description how many sites will be operated one time only during the period January 1 though April 15, and how many sites will be operated on a regular basis. Include any service that is planned for special populations, for example, interpreters for hearing-impaired taxpayers. Also include the hours of operation for your sites. Describe the validation and monitoring process that will be utilized to ensure that accurate site information is reflected in the information that is provided initially and through updates to the IRS. 10. Explain internal procedures to be used to monitor and evaluate program activities to ensure that the program is being administered in accordance with the guidelines. Returning applicants and/or multi-year applicants must include prior award cycle performance against the Minimum Federal Returns (MRE) in the cooperative agreement (Form 9661), including whether the MRE was met. If the MRE was not met, explain why and describe corrective actions and/or program changes planned to achieve the current year goal. 11. Describe what process is used to ensure the sites will be located within large elderly populations and how the sites will be easily accessible for elderly taxpayers. Proposed Program/Budget Plan