MDRC

In 1974, the Ford Foundation and six government agencies together created the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. Its purpose was to implement and document the results of new programs intended to help the poor.^[2] In the 1980s and 1990s, it became known for its evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs.^[2] It formally retired its original name and adopted "MDRC" as its registered corporate identity in 2003.^[3][4]

MDRC works across the United States, in Canada, and in the United Kingdom.^[4] Their 2021 budget is $66 million, which they derive from government contracts, foundations, corporations and individuals.^[5]

In May 2018, MDRC named its first Director for Outreach, Diversity, and Inclusion^[6] and made this position part of the executive team.^[7]

MDRC focuses on five policy areas and has two centers:^[8]

• Family well-being and children's development
• K-12 education
• Postsecondary education
• Youth development, Criminal justice, and employment
• Economic mobility, housing, and communities
• Center for applied behavioral science
• Center for data insights

MDRC helped pioneer the use of random assignment to test social programs.^[9] Its evaluations of welfare work programs influenced the welfare reform of the 1990s.^[10] In the 1990s and 2000s, MDRC's evaluation of the Career Academies high school reform model, which showed impacts on participants' earnings eight years after graduation, influenced the expansion of the model around the nation.^[11] MDRC was the intermediary for the first social impact bond demonstration in the United States, a project to reduce recidivism among 16- to 18-year-olds incarcerated at Rikers Island.^[12][13] MDRC's study of the City University of New York's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) has demonstrated that the program has doubled the three-year graduation rate of students who begin college requiring remedial education.^[14]

• Judith M. Gueron
• Cecilia Rouse
• Bridget T. Long

• Official website