Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies

Employment barrier reduction fund - iacaa was awarded a grant with the Illinois department of human services to act as the lead grantee to assist individuals across the state of Illinois seeking employment. This program addressed the barriers to employment for income eligible clients. Working with 21 of the Community Action Agencies, awards amount of $3,298,565 were provided to individuals for such items as rental assistance, auto repair, utility assistance, transportation, personal hygiene, training, professional clothing, and dental services. The program provided 2,892 services to participants in fiscal year 2025, who were all provided some form of assistance to help them seek employment. The maximum benefit provided per individual was $2,000.

Housing bridge subsidy administrator - iacaa served just over 200 clients with monthly rental assistance during fiscal year 2025. This grant funding is provided by the Illinois department of human services division of behavioral health and recovery. These programs provide rental subsidies to income-eligible individuals who've experienced serious mental health disorders, have been unhoused and institutionalized, but are able to live independently in their Community with our assistance.

Rental housing support program - rental housing support program - the rhsp program provides subsidized rent payments for individuals with income under 30% of the average medium income (ami) living in rural areas. In 2025, an average of 97 households were assisted per quarter in the program through june of 2025. Iacaa sub-grants with six Agencies through june of 2025; all are member Community Action Agencies. Beginning in july, 2025 Agencies contracted directly with Illinois housing development authority. From july-december, iacaa assisted an average of 22 households with rental assistance directly. These funds are provided by a grant with the Illinois housing development authority.

Energy savings kits program - the energy savings kits program provides energy savings kits to households that demonstrate a need based upon their income levels. The kits strive to take the first step in making a customers home more energy efficient. In all cases, the applicant must provide proof of income levels, to verify eligibility for an energy savings kit. With the help of the caa's in the comed, nicor, north shore gas, and peoples gas, service territory, the program was able to provide 20,978 energy savings kits to eligible households during the 2025 calendar year.

Iacaa training assistance - Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies (iacaa) was awarded a contract by the Illinois department of commerce and economic opportunity (idceo) to provide training and technical assistance to the 35 Community Action Agencies (caas) throughout Illinois. Under this contract, iacaa facilitated webinars covering a broad range of topics, including storytelling, communication, media literacy, re-entry, leadership, and data utilization. In addition to the webinars, iacaa delivered in-person training sessions including a new executive director orientation, a Community Action plan/community needs assessment (cap/cna) workshop, an executive director workshop, and fiscal staff training. Iacaa also hosted its annual conference, which featured sessions on succession planning, communication skills, energy and weatherization topics, fiscal management, coaching and leadership, re-entry, and human resources. The contract continued to support comprehensive results oriented management and accountability (roma) activities. These efforts included two virtual and two in-person roma training sessions, as well as ongoing support for roma professional candidates across the network. To expand the network's access to compliance tools, iacaa launched a zendesk resource library featuring organizational standards content and maintained required training courses in its learning management system (lms), including anti-harassment; fraud, waste, and abuse; and information security trainings. Iacaa also provided ongoing support for the Illinois data hub and delivered financial targeted technical assistance to individual Agencies throughout the year. Additional activities included supporting the 2025 nascsp training conference and administering a family centered coaching (fcc) scholarship, through which three ca Agencies received and started their fcc training.