Child Trends, Incorporated

Child Trends, Incorporated (doing business as Child Trends Inc.), a nonprofit research organization based in Rockville, Maryland, delivers research, program evaluation, data analysis, and technical assistance services to federal agencies as a prime contractor (72% of recent awards) and subcontractor, with no SBA set-asides across its portfolio.

Child Trends operates across 37 distinct federal agencies with substantial concentration in HHS. The top five funding sources by potential value account for 84% of combined dollars: the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (4 awards, $2 billion potential value across the PRESTO multiple-award IDV), HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration (36 awards, $561 million), HHS Health Resources and Services Administration (12 awards, $402.5 million), the Department of Labor Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy (2 awards, $99 million), and HHS Administration for Children and Families (13 awards, $35.5 million). Customer concentration by award count and potential value track closely, with HHS dominating in both dimensions.

Child Trends' core capability is evidence-building and evaluation research, grounded in concrete work across early childhood, child care policy, adolescent health, family support, and education. Representative prime awards include a $10.2 million delivery order (awarded April 2026) with HHS Administration for Children and Families for child care and early education policy research analysis under the GSA Multiple Award Schedule, running through 2031 on a time-and-materials basis; a $4.5 million cost-plus-fixed-fee definitive contract with ACF to explore how child care and early education licensing systems relate to quality and child outcomes, completing September 2029; a $5.85 million delivery order with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration for strategic communications, website hosting, and youth engagement activities for the Office of Population Affairs, completing September 2028; and a $3.04 million firm-fixed-price delivery order with the Health Resources and Services Administration to evaluate implementation quality in the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program under the HRSA Evaluation Studies 2019 IDIQ, completing June 2025.

Child Trends holds four significant IDVs anchoring its federal engagement: a $344.7 million single-award Evaluations and Evidence Building IDIQ with HRSA (awarded September 2024, completing September 2026); a $99 million single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement with the Department of Labor's Chief Evaluation Office under the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (awarded September 2023, completing September 2028); the Department of Education's $2 billion multiple-award PRESTO (Procurement of Research Evaluation and Statistics Task Orders) vehicle (awarded February 2023, completing February 2028); and a $60 million multiple-award BPA from the Department of Education's Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development for Data Analytics and Evaluation Support (awarded September 2021, completing September 2026). Across these IDVs and the GSA Multiple Award Schedule, Child Trends places task orders for research, evaluation, and technical assistance work.

Child Trends' federal grant portfolio spans 25 awards as prime recipient across HHS, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institutes of Health, with grant programs including the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program (CFDA 93.297), the Personal Responsibility Education Program (CFDA 93.092), the Head Start program (CFDA 93.600), and the Child Care and Development Fund (CFDA 93.596). Recent grants include a $910,000 cooperative agreement with the Office of Adolescent Health to conduct rigorous evaluation of the "Let's Talk Birth Control" teen pregnancy prevention intervention (awarded September 2025, completing September 2028); a $1.58 million cooperative agreement with the Administration on Children, Youth and Families for research and evaluation of innovative teenage pregnancy prevention strategies under the Personal Responsibility Education Program (awarded July 2025, completing September 2026); and a $100,000 project grant from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation for a study on migrant and seasonal Head Start families' experiences of support (awarded September 2024, completing March 2026). Child Trends engages subrecipients on grant work — MyHealthEd Inc. provides implementation oversight on the SafeSpace mobile application evaluation — and subcontracts on federal contracts, with Mathematica Inc., Futures Without Violence, James Bell Associates Inc., and The Adjacent Possible LLC among named partners.

On the SCI-reportable federal service-contract footprint, Child Trends invoiced $25.6 million across FY2022–FY2024, with growth from $7.2 million in FY2022 to $10.5 million in FY2024. The FTE trajectory on SCI-reportable prime contracts grew from 18.4 in FY2022 to 35.2 in FY2024, reflecting expansion in evaluation and research delivery capacity. Median government-paid rates on prime contracts run around $163/hr, with senior labor pricing reaching $232/hr at the 90th percentile, reflecting a portfolio skewed toward research analysts, program directors, and senior scholars. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors account for roughly 8% of total contractor hours, with 25 named subcontractors appearing across the portfolio. Child Trends' GSA Schedule labor rates span 25 active categories from Research Assistant 1 ($72.77/hr, bachelor's degree) through Senior Scholar 2 ($333.35/hr, PhD with 30 years experience), with no security-cleared labor roles offered.

Award activity grew from 21 awards in 2022 to 31 in 2023 and 27 in 2024, before moderating to 12 awards in 2025 and 2 in 2026 (through April). Twelve awards with combined potential value of $8.8 million reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, signaling recompete exposure across HHS and education evaluation contracts. The combined potential value across all 190 awards stands at $3.68 billion, with $240.5 million currently obligated (7% of total potential value), reflecting the large ceiling values on the PRESTO and Evaluations and Evidence Building IDVs.