From packets to a 12-minute application.
Multilingual, mobile-first, and accessible. Conditional logic shows applicants only what's relevant. Documents upload from a phone. Save and resume across days.
See the intake →Energy assistance, without the paperwork.
A unified intake, eligibility, and disbursement platform for Illinois LIHEAP, IHWAP, and CSBG — built for the 300,000 households who need it and the agencies that serve them.
300K+
Illinois households apply for energy assistance each season
9 → 1
Forms collapsed into a single guided intake
~80%
Average utility cost reduction delivered to recipients
35+
Community Action Agencies that share the same intake spine
What changes
Three problems the paper system can't solve.
From manual review to a rules engine.
Income, residency, household size, and crisis status checked automatically against current LIHEAP thresholds. Side-by-side document review. One-click decisions with audit trail.
See the caseworker desk →From spreadsheets to live operations.
Funnel, throughput, SLA, and disbursement visible by agency, county, and program. Crisis queues surfaced automatically. Federal reporting in a click.
See the admin view →How it works
One application. Three programs. Every Community Action Agency.
Apply
Households apply once and are evaluated for every program they qualify for — LIHEAP, IHWAP weatherization, emergency furnace, Community Solar.
- English, Spanish, Polish, Vietnamese, Arabic
- Mobile-first, WCAG 2.1 AA, Section 508
- Save and resume across sessions
- Document upload via phone camera
Review
Caseworkers see a queue prioritized by crisis flags. Eligibility rules run automatically. Documents are flagged when missing, expired, or mismatched.
- 60% State Median Income, 200% FPL automated
- Disconnection notices auto-prioritized
- Side-by-side document verification
- Approve, request info, or deny in one click
Decide & disburse
Approved benefits flow directly to utility vendors. Applicants get instant notification. Federal reporting populates in real time.
- Direct vendor disbursement to Ameren, Nicor, ComEd
- SMS + email + optional mail notification
- LIHEAP Performance Data Form auto-prepared
- Full audit log per application
Why now
The platform LIHEAP actually needs.
Built on patterns proven at scale in regulated, multi-tenant healthcare and government environments — not retrofitted from a sales CRM.
1
Built for citizen services, not sales pipelines.
LIHEAP is intake → eligibility → disbursement → reporting. Not a sales funnel. Connect is shaped for that workflow from day one — no force-fitting opportunity records into household applications.
2
Multi-agency from the architecture up.
Every record is tenant-scoped per Community Action Agency. Pilsen CAA's data never touches CEDA's. Same platform, same code path, isolated by design — the same pattern proven in CMM Level 5 healthcare deployments.
3
Live in months, not years.
Pilot one agency in 90 days. Roll out statewide in 9 months. Add IHWAP and CSBG to the same intake spine after that. The platform absorbs the next program; it doesn't get rebuilt for it.
4
Federal LIHEAP reporting, automated.
Performance Data Forms, household demographics, crisis benefit tracking — populated continuously, not reconstructed at deadline. Audit-ready. DPDP-, HIPAA-, and Illinois state-data-handling-aligned PII protection.