Midwest Pension Rights Project loses funding

After 1After four years of helping people track down “lost” pensions, the Midwest Pension Rights Project is in danger of shutting down.  The project, housed in the Women’s Support and Community Servicesbuilding on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis, serves people in five states,including Missouri and Illinois. Since October 1993, it has helped findpensions worth $12.5 million for more than 2,600 people, recovering$11.94 for every $1 in federal money it has received since October 1993.  But late last month, the project received word that its federal grantwasn’t being renewed. The grant provided three-fourths of the budgetfor offices here and in Chicago, said Suzanne Lagomarcino, theproject’s manager and executive director of OWL, the Voice of Midlifeand Older Women.   Lagomarcino said the project hasn’t received a good explanation of whythe $157,000 grant request was turned down, although she had been toldin August that the U.S. Administration on ­Aging would approve justfive of six projects that had applied for funds.  The pension project also receives small grants from privatefoundations, and its office is provided by Women’s Support. Lagomarcinois looking for alternate funding sources that can keep the projectgoing through early next year.

Source/more:  St Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/7A878521571D5CAC8625737E004E665E?OpenDocument