Secure Illinois Retirements
Secure Illinois Retirements is a pension advocacy organization founded by Ira Weiss to help Illinois public employees understand and protect their retirement benefits. The organization wanted to do something no one had done before. They needed to translate a complex statewide pension crisis into clear, personal guidance for firefighters, police officers, teachers and municipal workers. 650 pension funds, 102 counties and 5 distinct profession types all needed a home on a single digital platform. DAP built an interactive, data-driven website from scratch that served 625,000 workers with fund-specific projections across 500+ unique pages.
Secure Illinois Retirements advocates for pension transparency and educates over 625,000 public sector employees across Illinois. Founder Ira Weiss built the organization to track the funded status of 650+ pension funds and equip firefighters, police officers, teachers and municipal workers to protect their retirement benefits.
How We Helped Secure Illinois Retirements
Project Summary
DAP partnered with Secure Illinois Retirements from the first strategy session through website delivery and ongoing maintenance. The engagement started in late 2020 with a $41,300 website build and grew into a multi-year retainer covering site improvements, content updates and digital marketing.
This project went far beyond a standard WordPress build. We created a data-driven platform with an interactive Illinois county map, a pension calculator, scalable page templates for 500+ education pages and community integration through Mighty Networks. Every design decision pointed toward one outcome. A public employee in any county should land on a page that speaks to their profession, their fund and their future.
The Challenge
Zero Digital Presence No Website, No Platform
SIR had a bold vision but no digital presence. Their starting point was a barebones WordPress mockup with no interactive elements, no database and no way to deliver personalized fund information at scale.
Massive Content Scale 500+ Pages of Unique Content Needed
Each of Illinois' 102 counties contains multiple cities and pension funds, and each one required a unique pension education page. The sheer volume of content made manual page creation impossible.
Complex User Journeys 625K Employees, 5 Professions, 102 Counties
Police officers, firefighters, teachers, municipal workers and state employees each belong to a different pension system. Routing each user to their specific fund data required a navigation structure that filtered by profession, county and city.
Low Pension Awareness Public Employees Didn't Know Their Funds Were At Risk
Most Illinois public employees recognized the pension crisis in broad strokes but had no idea how it threatened their specific fund. SIR needed a way to make abstract funding data feel personal and urgent.
How we Helped Secure Illinois Retirements
Custom Data-Driven WordPress Platform
We built a responsive website from scratch, purpose-built to organize pension information by county, city and profession across Illinois.
- Built an interactive county map of Illinois with clickable regions that drill down to city-level pension data
- Created a multi-step homepage form routing users by county, city and profession to their specific pension page
- Developed 5 profession-specific page templates for police, firefighters, teachers, municipal workers and state employees
- Engineered a custom backend and database to store, update and serve pension fund data across 650+ funds
- Delivered a responsive mobile-first design with clear navigation paths across 500+ pages
Pension Calculator & Data Visualization
We built custom interactive tools that turned abstract pension funding percentages into tangible projections for individual employees.
- Created a side-by-side "promised vs. actual" pension calculator showing Tier 1 and Tier 2 projections
- Designed real employee personas with photos, years of service and retirement projections
- Built dynamic charts showing how pension shortfalls compound over 5-year periods
- Generated fund-specific data visualizations showing funded status, shortfall amounts and risk levels
- Wrote plain-language explanations of what funded status means for each profession at the city level
Scalable Content Architecture
With 500+ unique pension pages on the roadmap, we built a template system that let SIR’s team create city-level content on their own.
- Developed standardized page templates with dynamic data fields for pension fund metrics
- Designed an educational content framework covering pension basics, cautionary tales and proposed solutions
- Integrated Mighty Networks community forums organized by profession and city
- Configured Active Campaign email automation for targeted pension alerts and legislative updates
- Embedded social sharing tools with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn integration for grassroots advocacy
Digital Marketing & SEO Strategy
We mapped a digital strategy to put SIR’s pension data in front of 625,000 public sector employees through organic search and targeted outreach.
- Mapped an SEO keyword strategy targeting "Illinois pension crisis," city-level pension terms and profession-specific queries
- Executed a city-level content strategy creating unique pages to capture local search intent across 102 counties
- Launched a link building campaign to establish SIR as an authoritative pension education resource
- Managed a $10,000 Google Ad Grant for targeted awareness campaigns
- Ran social media campaigns to reach firefighters, police officers and teachers in specific Illinois communities
What we Achieved
We delivered a content architecture that scaled to over 500 unique pension education pages. Each one maps to a specific city, county and profession. Visitors see localized fund data, personalized projections and a clear next step.
The interactive county map covers every single county in Illinois. Any of the state’s 625,000 public employees can find their local pension data in seconds. Each county drills down to individual cities and pension funds.
We built dedicated page templates for police, firefighters, teachers, municipal workers and state employees. Each template surfaces the right pension system with profession-specific language, retirement projections and community links.
The platform pulls data from over 650 individual pension funds across Illinois and presents funded status, shortfall amounts and risk indicators in plain language. A teacher in Springfield sees different numbers than a firefighter in Joliet.
What started as a single website build in 2020 grew into a multi-year partnership. DAP continues to deliver website improvements, maintenance and digital marketing support through a dedicated monthly retainer. SIR now has a permanent technology and strategy team backing its mission.
"DAP is an incredible firm to work with. We used them for a very detailed and sophisticated website project, and they CRUSHED it for us. Highly highly recommended."
