http://www.illinoisvc.org/

The IVCA is the trade organization for venture capitalists in the Illinois area.  From the entrepreneur’s perspective, the IVCA seems to have little to offer since its educational and networking opportunities apply to their members firms rather than new businesses.  The site claims that they help to identify appropriate candidate firms for a particular type of investment, but it is not immediately clear how they perform that function.  The site does contain a list of its members with a short profile, so this might be a point of reference for entrepreneurs to begin their search for investors, however this “cold calling” for investment is probably a very ineffective means to find funding.