With less than a year of state-organized funding left, the Waukegan Community Federation has begun to explore alternatives that would allow the agency to continue its work.
The federation is a consortium of local social-service agencies and one of five created statewide in 1995 to facilitate creation of the Illinois Department of Human Services, the state’s one-stop social-service agency that replaced several smaller agencies July 1.
The Waukegan group’s annual budget of $150,000 is funded by a private organization through an arrangement with the state. In June that money will run out, federation officials said.
But state policy has encouraged the federations to continue their work, albeit with money from other sources.
“If the community feels that what we have done has been beneficial, then we will have to look into alternative sources of funding,” said Thomas Sullivan, the federation’s executive director.
