America Contribution Trust is a nonpartisan research and policy organization advancing the contribution economy — a framework that recognizes, values, and compensates the unpaid labor that sustains care, community, and culture in America.
ACT exists to build the intellectual, policy, and systems infrastructure needed to transform how America values and compensates all forms of human contribution.
Original studies, national datasets, and longitudinal research that quantify the full scope of human contribution — giving policymakers, economists, and advocates the evidence they need to act.
We are building the intellectual architecture and technical infrastructure for a new economic model — one that accounts for caregiving, civic participation, creative labor, and knowledge work alongside traditional market output.
We translate research and framework into actionable legislation — working with legislators, agencies, and administrators to build durable, funded pathways that recognize and compensate human contribution at scale.
Grants, fellowships, and demonstration projects that test compensation and recognition models across caregiving, arts, civic service, and free inquiry — proving the framework works in practice and building replicable blueprints for communities nationwide.
"In a post-AI economy, GDP is an insufficient ledger of prosperity. Every hour of caregiving, every volunteer shift, every work of art, every piece of knowledge passed from elder to child — none of it appears in our measure of national prosperity. We are the richest country in the world — if you count all contributions."— America Contribution Trust · Statement of Purpose
Multi-year research quantifying the full spectrum of non-market contribution — caregiving, civic participation, creative labor, and knowledge transfer — and their measurable impact on community health, economic resilience, and national prosperity.
View researchActionable policy frameworks, Medicaid waiver models, and federal legislative proposals to create sustainable compensation and recognition pathways for all forms of human contribution.
See policy workResearch, grants, and advocacy recognizing the economic and social value of craft and artistic labor — woodworking, glassblowing, sewing, music, public art, storytelling, cultural preservation — as essential human infrastructure, not discretionary output.
Apply nowFellowships, open datasets, and publishing infrastructure supporting independent scholars and researchers producing knowledge for the public good — outside the constraints of private donors, corporate interest, or institutional capture.
Learn moreRigorous, peer-reviewed, and publicly available — our research is designed to move policy.
A comprehensive national analysis combining administrative Medicaid data, labor economics modeling, and original survey research to produce the first unified estimate of family caregiving's economic contribution.
An analysis of Home and Community-Based Services waiver authorities and a model framework for states seeking to formalize family caregiver compensation within existing Medicaid infrastructure.
"The people who keep traditional craft alive are doing cultural preservation work. ACT treats that like the economic contribution it is."
"An ACT grant meant I could keep playing in my community without a second job — and keep the venue alive."
"My work documenting Indigenous foodways has no publisher. ACT made it possible anyway."
ACT grants support people who create genuine economic, cultural, and community value — but have no mechanism to make an income from it. If that's you, please apply.
Support research that changes policy. Fund programs that change lives. Partner with the intellectual authorities behind America's post-AI economy.