On March 3, 2020, William Chatman was hired as Comprehensive Community Solutions 3rd Executive Director/CEO. When he stepped into this role, the organization was fiscally in trouble, the organization operated only the YouthBuild Rockford program, had five employees, and COVID 19 would hit a week later. Statistically 50% to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on the role, regardless of whether they were an external hire or promoted from within and that’s walking into a normal situation. William was not a normal hire. William had a long history with CCS. William came to the Rockford community in 2001 looking for a second chance as a young adult. His aunt told him about YouthBuild Rockford, operated by CCS, and he went and filled out an application to enroll into that program where he graduated with honors in 2002. William came back to CCS in 2004 and served a two-year term as a Full-Time AmeriCorps member and was later hired in during his second term as a program coordinator. William worked for CCS for a total of eight years before he would go on to be responsible for running youth programs in six counties in southern Wisconsin. William always had a love for CCS because of its YouthBuild program and the second chance it gave him to put his life on track to become an asset to his community. It was this love that prompted William to apply for the Executive Director/CEO position when it became available.

By 2023, CCS had grown it’s operating budget to $3 million, employed 28 staff, and grown its program portfolio beyond its flagship YouthBuild program to operating four legacy programs: YouthBuild Rockford, RockForWork, ALPHA and Alive & Free. William and his team found funding to rehab the entire main office building giving it a more modern industrial look that is comfortable and safe for the community, rebranded the organization with a new mission, core values, website, and look that spoke to the community it served.

Comprehensive Community Solutions four legacy programs are a direct response to what the data said about Rockford, Illinois in 2020. When William stepped into the role of Executive Director/CEO of Comprehensive Community Solutions, Rockford was at a 18.3% unemployment rate with the rate for young people between the age of 16-24 years old being 20.2%. This rate was higher than the state and national rates. The poverty rate was 19.9%, also hire than that of the state and nation. The poverty rate amongst 16 to 24 year old’s was a staggering 51.9%. The Department of HUD did a study across the US and concluded that neighborhoods with high poverty rates tend to have higher rates of violent crime. This was true for Rockford and explains why Rockford was labeled as “more dangerous than Chicago”, ranking it at the time as the 11th most dangerous city in the nation.

CCS strongly believed that the feeder for Rockford’s unemployment and poverty rates were the local graduation rates which was at 67% at that time. The graduation rate coupled with the fact that 11% of the youth that leave school for whatever reason, in Rockford, do not return. From this information, CCS understood the following:

• There’s a group of young people that need a pathway to a high school diploma or its equivalent that continued into post-secondary education: The YouthBuild Rockford program fulfilled this need,

• There’s a group of young that have a high school diploma but don’t know what their next steps are: The RockForWork Program would fulfill this need through it’s career pathways,

• There’s a group of young people who are engaged in the educational system who are on the verge of falling between the cracks and feeding the statistics we talked about: Our Advance Learning Program for Higher Achievements (ALPHA) would fulfill the needs of this population by providing safe place programming and wraparound services that help these young people get on track and stay on track to graduate,

• Young people also need to address the trauma they endure growing up in a community plagued by violence: The Alive & Free program would fulfill the needs of these young people by providing trauma based therapy, assessments, behavioral improvement, plans, one-on-one sessions, group sessions and so much more.

To learn more about these programs, please visit the tabs of each of these programs that can be accessed through the tabs above. These programs are a comprehensive approach that is solution focused to address the needs of the Rockford community. These programs and the dedicated Board, staff, and community partners that make them possible is: COMPREHENSIVE COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS.