Sponsors (8)
Requires designated federal agencies to prioritize and require evidence-based practices and evaluations for covered grant programs, plus OMB guidance and annual agency reports to Congress.
Official title: To amend title 5, United States Code, to require the implementation of evidence-based practices with respect to certain Federal grants, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 13, 2026 by Rudy Yakym · Last progress January 13, 2026
The bill increases accountability and taxpayer value by requiring evidence-based grantmaking and evaluations, improving service alignment, but imposes added costs and reporting burdens and risks sidelining smaller or innovative community providers during a staggered implementation.
Nonprofits and state/local governments will be more likely to deliver services using approaches proven to produce results because agencies must prioritize and require evidence-based practices.
Taxpayers could get better value from grant dollars because agencies must evaluate grant effectiveness and publish results to inform future solicitations.
Communities served may receive programs better aligned to local needs because agencies must prioritize applications responsive to community needs and from organizations representative of the target community.
Smaller providers and community organizations lacking evaluation capacity will be disadvantaged in competing for grants because evidence-based prioritization favors programs with existing rigorous evaluations.
State and local agencies and grant recipients will incur additional administrative costs and reporting burdens to develop definitions, frameworks, evaluations, and public reporting.
Communities may lose access to innovative or promising but untested community-led practices because prioritizing 'evidence-based' approaches can exclude interventions that lack rigorous evaluations.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires a defined set of federal agencies to require and prioritize evidence-based practices in covered grant programs. Agencies must include clear purposes and intended outcomes in grant notices, prefer applicants using evidence-based approaches and representative of community needs, require grantees to deliver services using evidence-based practices, run periodic evaluations using federal evaluation standards, publish results, and report annually to Congress; OMB must issue guidance within one year on the meaning and application of "evidence-based."