Tracking Your Child Tax Credit Outreach Impact

We know that you are working hard to help families claim the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC)! You may be hearing directly from individuals about the impact the CTC has had on their lives and those of their children. In addition to the stories you hear from families you work with, you may be wondering about the overall impact of your CTC outreach and which of your outreach activities or communications have been most effective in encouraging families to claim the credit.

Fortunately, our partners at Code for America have made it easy for you to gather data on your CTC outreach impact. You can request a “unique URL” for GetCTC.org, which is the online simplified filing portal where families can quickly and easily claim the CTC and 3rd stimulus payment. This will enable you to track outreach efforts just for your organization, agency or school. Your unique URL will provide you insight into the use of GetCTC.org among families you connect with, but will not capture data on individuals who use in-person Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) services or other tax assistance options. While numbers do not tell the full story, we hope that this data can help you learn from and and adjust your outreach efforts- and celebrate your achievements in connecting families to thousands of dollars! Please see below for easy steps you can take now to request a unique URL for GetCTC.org:

  • Please choose a short series of letters as your unique URL (for example, the abbreviation of your organization’s name). Unique URLs will look like this: “www.GetCTC.org/yourURL”

  • After submitting the request form, you will gain access to a data dashboard where you can see how many people have filed for the CTC using your unique URL and how much money they have received. You can also see when people visited GetCTC.org and filed returns, allowing you to determine if certain communications – texts, emails or flyers, for example – result in a greater response than others. Below, you can see an example of what the dashboard looks like:
Courtesy: Code for America

If you have any questions about requesting or using a unique URL for your CTC outreach, please reach out to Code for America: [email protected]