The U.S. Department of Labor funded the intervention approaches and programmatic technical assistance for the demonstration. The Social Security Administration funded evaluation support for the demonstration, including evaluation-related technical assistance and the full evaluation.

The Social Security Administration contracted with Mathematica to provide evaluation support for two phases of the project. In Phase 1, the U.S. Department of Labor funded the implementation and program assistance for cooperative agreements in eight states to conduct planning and start-up activities, including the launch of a small pilot demonstration. In Phase 1, Mathematica provided evaluation technical assistance and an evaluability assessment to assess the potential for state projects to conduct a full evaluation in Phase 2. In Phase 2, the U.S. Department of Labor funded the operations and program technical assistance activities for the states recommended in Phase 1, and the Social Security Administration funded the full set of evaluation activities. In Phase 2, Mathematica led a full evaluation of the selected states, an evaluation that included a participation analysis, process analysis, impact analysis, and benefit-cost analysis. Mathematica tailored the specific evaluation design for each state. The evaluation was based on data collected from a baseline survey, three rounds of site visits, in-depth interviews with a small number of workers, two follow-up surveys with larger samples of workers (2 and 12 months after study intake), two follow-up surveys with providers (aligned with the worker survey timing), Social Security Administrative records on program participation and employment, and administrative data on services and costs from each state.