Urban Institute microsimulation budgets (TRIM3, ATTIS, TPC)

[MaxGhenis]

I started looking for HHS contracts to Urban Institute for developing the Transfer Income Model, version 3 (TRIM3). Along the way, I found some other contracts relevant to our work.

High level

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/contract-explorer shows that the HHS Assistant Secretary for Administration paid them $9.4 million in 2017. I would have expected that the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation would fund TRIM3, but they didn't show up.

I ran a sam.gov query showing that Urban has received $285 million in federal contracts since 2010.

Urban's 2020 financial report shows that 34.5% of their funding comes from the federal government, or $39 million.

Specific projects

There's probably some way to query sam.gov or usaspending.gov for particular contracts, but I couldn't find it. Instead, I went to the HHS Service Contract Inventory for several past years. I combined the SCIs from 2011 to 2016 into this spreadsheet (filtered to Urban), and pulled out contracts related to the CCDF policy database, the TANF policy database, and microsimulation (which looks to be TRIM3) into this spreadsheet, summarized here:

Year	CCDF	TANF	TRIM3	Grand Total
2011		$414,252	$999,938	$1,414,190
2012	$286,600		$904,925	$1,191,525
2013	$330,082	$370,528	$1,259,790	$1,960,400
2014	$480,252	$383,654	$1,270,207	$2,134,113
2015	$417,861	$400,114	$264,995	$1,082,970
2016	$1,224,461			$1,224,461
Grand Total	$2,739,256	$1,568,548	$4,699,855	$9,007,659

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Update — May 2026: full Urban microsimulation portfolio

Broadened scope beyond HHS contracts to cover Urban's three production microsimulation models — TRIM3, ATTIS, and the TPC microsim (joint with Brookings). Triangulated from USAspending.gov, Urban's Forms 990 (FY2022–FY2024), Brookings's Form 990 (FY2023), and foundation grant pages.

Summary

Model	Annual budget (USD)	Range	Confidence
TRIM3	~$2.0M	$1.4M – $2.8M	High
ATTIS	~$1.5M	$0.8M – $2.5M	Low / medium
TPC microsim	~$3.0M	$2.0M – $4.5M	Medium
Combined Urban portfolio	~$6.5M	$4.2M – $9.8M	—

If ASPE fully exercises its option-year ceiling on the new TRIM3 contract (below), the combined portfolio rises to ~$7.0M/yr.

TRIM3

• ASPE contract 75P00120F37006 obligated $6.86M over Sep 2020 – Sep 2025 with a base_and_all_options ceiling of $7.975M (~$1.4–1.6M/yr nominal). This is the canonical "TRIM3 technical assistance and data analytics" contract.
• Follow-on 75P00125F80090 awarded Sep 2025 has obligated $700K for year one but a ceiling of $11.81M (~$2.4M/yr if fully exercised — ~50% real-dollar uplift on the prior contract).
• ASPE has funded TRIM and held the copyright for 30+ years. Russell Sage Foundation periodically funds specific TRIM3 projects (e.g. the National Academies child poverty roadmap), but these are project-budget scale.
• Sources: USAspending.gov (CONT_AWD_75P00120F37006, CONT_AWD_75P00125F80090); TRIM3 history.

ATTIS

• USAspending returns zero federal contracts naming "ATTIS". One USDA/FNS contract with Urban (ABAWD analysis, $1.48M, 2016–2020) fits ATTIS's SNAP focus but predates ATTIS's main public emergence.
• ATTIS is funded through stacked foundation initiatives:
  • State of the Safety Net — Annie E. Casey, David and Lucile Packard, Pritzker Children's Initiative
  • From Safety Net to Solid Ground — Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Linda Giannarelli co-leads both TRIM3 and ATTIS; Laura Wheaton lead-analyses ATTIS and co-leads TRIM3. Shared leadership implies ATTIS overhead piggybacks on TRIM3 infrastructure, making it likely smaller than TRIM3.
• Biggest residual uncertainty: whether ATTIS has a single sustaining grant in the $1M+/yr range or is a mosaic of $200–500K project grants. Foundation 990s would resolve this but don't break out by sub-initiative.

TPC microsim

• TPC overall is foundation-funded (no federal contracts mentioning Tax Policy Center on USAspending). MacArthur disclosed $8.4M across 8 grants 2006–2016; also Ford, Gates, Rockefeller, Hewlett, Arnold Ventures.
• Urban's 2022 990 shows Brookings receiving $1.086M as subcontract/consulting from Urban — TPC's Brookings-side payment.
• Brookings's 2023 990 reports Economic Studies (the program housing TPC) at $21.2M; TPC is one of several Economic Studies projects (Hutchins Center, Hamilton Project, etc.), so TPC's Brookings half is likely $2–4M total. William Gale comp alone is $521K.
• Microsim share of total TPC spend: the microsim is the engine producing all distributional tables and revenue scores. Allocating 40–50% of TPC spend specifically to the microsim team (rather than people using it) gives ~$3M/yr as a central estimate.

Sanity check

Urban's Income and Benefits Policy Center (IBPC) is the umbrella for both TRIM3 and ATTIS plus retirement/child-support/workforce work. Total IBPC expenses FY2024 = $14.9M (Urban 990 Part III line 4c). TRIM3 + ATTIS combined cannot exceed $14.9M; central estimates ($3.5M) imply ~25% of IBPC, which is consistent with shared leadership over multiple work streams.

Methodology

Triangulated three orthogonal sources: (1) USAspending.gov contract data via public API; (2) Urban Institute Forms 990 FY2022–FY2024 (program-service breakouts and Schedule J contractor lists, which disclose the Brookings subcontract); (3) foundation funder lists and MacArthur grant database for the non-federal portion. Federal contracts establish a hard floor for TRIM3. Foundation+990 evidence establishes a soft ceiling for ATTIS and TPC. Largest residual uncertainty is the share of TPC spend attributable specifically to the microsim vs. the rest of TPC — published funder reports don't break it out, so a 25–50% range is unavoidable.

When to refresh

• After Urban's FY2025 990 is filed on ProPublica (~mid-2027).
• After the next TRIM3 contract option is exercised or modified.
• After any major foundation announces a new ATTIS or TPC grant.