Frequently Asked Questions

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Nest and Rise's mission is to facilitate the delivery of trauma-informed housing, care, and support for structurally vulnerable populations while piloting, evaluating, and sharing scalable models that bridge practice, policy, and systems innovation.

Nest and Rise was founded in 2023.

Nest and Rise, Inc. operates in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

Our Validation Engine is Nest and Rise’s real-world innovation lab model that tests, evaluates, and scales trauma-informed care and housing interventions. We turn promising theories of change into evidence-backed, policy-ready models through structured pilots, AI-assisted outcomes tracking, and co-designed evaluation. 

Both.
We collaborate with government agencies, community-based organizations, funders, and providers to test their theories of change or co-develop new ones, grounded in lived experience and system insights.
Our role is to ensure those ideas are rigorously tested in real-world conditions and transformed into scalable infrastructure. 

 We customize outcomes based on the model being tested, but commonly measure:

• Housing Stability (retention, returns to homelessness)
   
• Medicaid Efficiency (documentation compliance, billing outcomes)
   
• Health Outcomes (ER visits, care continuity)
   
• Equity Indicators (racial disparity reduction, service accessibility)
   
• Systems Change (policy uptake, cross-agency alignment)

Yes.
Philanthropies, government agencies, and MCOs can sponsor validations of specific models (e.g., PSH for reentry populations, peer support pilots, trauma-informed youth housing) or partner with us to test high-potential ideas from their portfolio.
We offer advisory support, implementation, evaluation, and infrastructure all under one roof. 

 Our entire lab model is built around SAMHSA’s six principles of trauma-informed care. We prioritize:

• Peer-led engagement
   
• Consent-based data use
   
• Transparency in evaluation
   
• Minimization of system harm
   
• Lived experience in model design
   

We don’t just evaluate outcomes — we evaluate how the care was delivered and whom it served.

 We’re explicitly designed to be complementary.
We validate models with the stakeholders who need them to work — Medicaid agencies, HUD grantees, MCOs, philanthropic initiatives — so nothing gets stuck in theory.
If another lab has promising findings, we can pilot that model through our engine and make it real-world ready. 

 We treat failure as data.
If a model doesn’t deliver the intended outcomes, we identify why — whether the issue is design, implementation, incentives, or alignment.
Then we either iterate or retire the model with transparency. Our goal is not to prove everything works — it’s to prove what does, and ensure public systems don’t scale what doesn’t. 

 All AI tools used in the Validation Engine are governed by OpenNest Labs, our trauma-informed AI R&D arm.
We evaluate for bias, transparency, consent, explainability, and equity impact before any tool is deployed.
And we always include human oversight, peer-led feedback loops, and ethical review checkpoints — because no algorithm should decide who gets care without accountability. 

Perfect — that’s what we’re built for.
Funders can bring us a model they’ve supported (e.g., a youth housing pilot, a trauma-informed peer support model), and we’ll plug it into the Validation Engine:
→ Real-world test site
→ AI-enabled outcome tracking
→ Evaluation
→ Policy translation
→ Replication strategy

We de-risk innovation for funders, not just providers.