AARP volunteers prepare taxes for the community at Braden River Library

As an air traffic controller, Frank Sweeney worked with numbers all day.

Now, in his retirement, he wanted to give back to the community, only not just with money. He wanted to give his time.

Sweeney is the local coordinator of the Braden River Library site for AARP’s tax preparation services, and has volunteered for the effort for several years now. 

“As sadistic as it sounds, I actually like taxes,” he said.

Doing them, not paying them. 

AARP coordinates free tax preparation services in a program that will serve anybody regardless of income and age or AARP membership, but the program is geared toward lower-income people and those over 50. 

According to Gordon MacLeod, who has been the district coordinator for AARP’s Manatee tax program for the last eight years, volunteers in Manatee County provided 2,189 tax returns across six sites. 519 of those came from the Braden River Library site. 

All of the more than 50 volunteers in Manatee County are required to go through a preparation process which includes days of training and classwork, and all volunteers must pass an IRS-mandated test on a yearly basis. 

Not all volunteers prepare taxes, however, as some locations have greeters that help by assuring those who seek help have the necessary documentation and are prepared. 

Many of the volunteers have a background in math, like Sweeney and another volunteer, Christine Baron. Baron worked with single family finance for Fannie Mae before she retired. 

Baron, in her third year of volunteering for tax preparation through AARP, said she enjoys just being able to help. 

“I have a social bent, and I’ve always volunteered for various projects,” she said. 

She noted a particular sympathy toward recently widowed clients, noting that they sometimes come in nervous, shaking or embarrassed. Ultimately, being able to help people who need it makes the difference for her, she said. Sometimes she’ll even get a hug, she said. 

Jeanne Sweet, a former banker and Baron’s fellow volunteer, said the gratitude makes her efforts worthwhile. 

She recalled an instance of helping an older woman who began to cry when she got a refund, telling Sweet that she didn’t know how important that was for her. 

“It’s a good service,” Sweet said. 

When clients come in, they’re ideally looking at about an hour of time to get their taxes squared away, MacLeod said. They work first with a preparer to get the information entered. When that’s done, the clients work with another volunteer who reviews the information with them to make sure everything is accurate. 

Most people who volunteer, MacLeod said, are seeking ways to give back to the community. 

“I think most people who volunteer do it basically because they enjoy meeting people,” he said. 

MacLeod also noted that many clients come several years in a row, and they remember the volunteers the same way the volunteers remember the clients.

“It’s a very congenial atmosphere, most of the time,” he said.