Name Dropping Volunteer Mahomet tax preparer retires after 28 years

MAHOMET - Brenda Farney is as comfortable with numbers as fish are with water.

So much so, that every job she ever worked always calculated numbers, and when she saw a newspaper ad seeking a volunteer tax worker, she jumped at the chance - but she is venturing into different bluer waters having retired from being an AARP tax volunteer local coordinator for the last 28 years at the Mahomet Public Library.

"I enjoy numbers, that's the bottom line," she said.

"I always seem to gravitate toward things that involve numbers."

The Illinois native lived in western Iowa when she first got the itch to take a tax-preparation job for H&R Block.

Three to four years later, the couple moved to Mahomet.

She took a banking job in Champaign and saw an advertisement in the paper for the Mahomet Public Library in 1997 searching for volunteer tax preparers - she jumped at the opportunity.

Upon following up, her weekdays would be spent at her day job at the bank with the week nights and weekends filled with the volunteer tax work at the former library location.

In the downtown building, it was hard to find privacy needed to do tax returns, so going to the new building offered well-suited facilities for her work.

After 28 years, Farney met countless people and she said her clientele would mainly spread through word of mouth.

While taxes would be due on April 15, her busy season would start as early as January, with people starting to schedule appointments.

"I enjoyed meeting the people, and we didn't have a lot of time to converse, but things come up as you're asking questions or figuring out what their need is," she said.

"You get to know people, and I enjoyed the fact that I could help people who didn't have the means to go to a tax preparer - and pay hundreds of dollars to get a simple tax return done."

She said lots of people don't understand much about the paperwork, so her acting as a specialist, especially at no fee, made her feel fulfilled.

When she signed up for her service, she agreed it would be 100 percent free, so appreciative people who wanted to tip, just couldn't - not that she wasn't grateful.

There was one lesson that trumped everything she learned in her position - kindness.

"[It would be] being kind to seniors, because a lot of it is more on the senior end, although we could do it for any age, we weren't restricted in that, but seniors really need that attention," she said. "Sometimes they're just not treated with the respect that they deserve."

She continued by saying taxes can be complicated, so she would break down the process to her clients.

"I really saw that many times they were scared to death to come in and have to get this job done because they didn't feel like they knew anything," she said.

Farney emphasized the importance of community service, because without helpers, everything is harder. If someone has an interest in something, chances are there is a place to volunteer in that area.

Leaving behind her post for the last nearly three decades was bittersweet, but she wouldn't have changed anything.

"It's a good volunteer [position], and if there's anybody out there that would like a good opportunity, I would suggest they try it," she said. "They can learn the things that they need to know, but it would be a great experience for someone, especially if they don't mind numbers."

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This story was originally published June 8, 2026 at 9:49 AM.